


I Wish to be a Cornerstone

by coricomile



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 1970s, Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-02-22 20:35:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 60,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23566699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coricomile/pseuds/coricomile
Summary: 1972. Evegni has been training his entire life to prove that the USSR is just as good as- no, better than- the Canadian brutes that claim hockey as their own. When he finally has the chance to prove it, he's ready. He's not, however, ready for Sidney.
Relationships: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Comments: 545
Kudos: 261





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amazing moodboard made by [Ashjashakti.](http://Ashjashakti.tumblr.com)

The best part of the homecoming parties is the leaving. Zhenya takes his seat on the bus and yanks his tie off, balling it up and stuffing it into his pocket. It had strangled him all night and the only thing that had felt worse was the constant presence of his politician conversational partners. They made him nervous, even as they praised his victories like he had won them a war instead of a hockey game. The alcohol almost made up for it, but if he has to hear Nabokov's stance on the Olympic committee one more time, he's going to defect.

Bryz is reenacting a conversation of his own with Artemi, gesturing widely enough that Alex has to duck to avoid a direct hit to his already crooked nose. Artemi, who hasn't been around nearly as long as the rest of them, looks a little wild-eyed. Probably, a good captain would save him. Zhenya does not claim to be a good captain. Bryz is harmless as long as he can run his mouth. The kid will learn eventually.

They've been away for what feels like forever, and Zhenya just wants to lay down in his bed with the quilt his mother had sewn for him and sleep until he has to report back to the complex to start training again. Hotel beds are never the same and he misses the sounds of home that he's gotten so used to. He's lived in his apartment for six years. It's not the fanciest place in the world, but it's his and he wants it.

The bus rattles away from the still going party and Zhenya sinks as far down into his seat as he can, weight lifting from him as the building fades away. Coach stands up at the front, bracing himself with one hand on the seats and whistles for their attention. He looks strange in his suit and tie, a little like a stuffed sausage with frizzled hair. Without his usual tracksuit and woollen hat, he almost looks like a totally different person.

"Good job boys," Coach says. The team cheers before he can go on. Coach waits them out, bouncing along with the pockmarked road. "Go home, see your families. Have fun. You have one week to recover before we start on our biggest challenge yet."

Alex looks back over his shoulder and grins. Zhenya rolls his eyes. Every challenge is the biggest one yet. Coach has trained them through hundreds of biggest challenges since their very first games. Somehow, his enthusiasm has never once wavered, even when team morale sank. It's an admirable quality, but Zhenya has heard enough two hour pep talks to last a lifetime and he doesn't really want to hear another one right now.

"In three months, we will go to Canada and teach them how to play hockey," Coach says.

"You're shitting me." Kuzy sits up higher in his seat and yelps when Gonch smacks his ear.

"I am not," Coach says with that familiar, crazy smile that means he's already planning their practices out now in fine detail.

The echo of the team's rising voices is almost painfully loud. Zhenya is too stunned to add to it. This is what they've been training for since they were children. This is what everything has been leading up to, but it's never felt like a real, reachable goal. They're going to play the Canadians. They're going to prove, once and for all, that they play real hockey. That they should be taken seriously. That the Soviet people should be taken seriously.

Zhenya doesn't know if he's ready for that much weight to be placed on his shoulders, but he's burning for the chance to find out.

"This has been my dream for years," Coach says when the noise dies down. He looks over all of them, his fingers digging into the pale green seat cushion even as his face softens. "You boys are like my children. I am so proud of all of you and I know all of your names will be written into history."

Zhenya closes his eyes and clenches his fist. If he sees Coach crying, he's going to cry too, and he doesn't have enough energy or alcohol in him to have a crying jag at midnight. He is terrified and humbled, hungry to play, and a little overwhelmed. Now that they're finally here, he doesn't know what to do. Now that they're finally here, he doesn't know what they'll aim for next.

"One week, boys," Coach says. "You've earned it."

The yelling has stopped, but there's still a lot of chatter, low voices mixing together into a calming hum of sound. Zhenya opens his eyes when someone slides onto the seat with him, knocking him into the wall as the bus takes a sharp turn. Alex gives him a big, gap-toothed grin and bear hugs him. Zhenya hugs him back as tightly as he can. If anyone else knows what this inexplicable tangle of emotion feels like, it's Alex.

"We're going to fucking Canada," Alex says into Zhenya's ear. Zhenya squeezes him tighter, everything inside of him vibrating with the need to _do_ something. He needs to get all of this out of him before he explodes or goes crazy from it. "Fuck Canada. This is fucking Russia and we are champions."

"We're going to blow them out of the water," Zhenya says. He has to believe they will. They've won so much already, have already proven themselves time and time again, but this really is bigger than everything else. This is Canada. This is the NHL. This is _everything_ and they're going to win or die trying.

\---

Zhenya spends his week off catching up on sleep and playing chess with the cranky old men that hang out in the park. It flies by before he can really enjoy it, and then he's back at the complex with the entire team, moving his little bag of clothes and toiletries back into his room. It feels more like home than his apartment does sometimes.

Summer is never Zhenya's favorite time of year. It's too hot and they always spend most of the day outside under the sun, sweating and swearing and running through whatever strange new drill Coach has dreamed up for them. Kuzy and Alex had enjoyed the dance lessons enough that Zhenya had wondered if they would leave for the ballet. Bryz had learned how to do the splits during the gymnastics lessons, which had made Zhenya's dick hurt with phantom pain every time he did it. He still does them sometimes when he feels like messing with Zhenya's head.

Mostly they spend time by the lake, running up and down the hill and throwing rocks back and forth. The rock drill is both the worst thing Zhenya has ever had to do and the best thing that has ever happened to his reflexes. Anisimov is a brutal partner, and he never gives Zhenya any slack with his throws. Zhenya has a few scars that remind him to pay attention.

Life at the complex is as easy and as well worn as a forest path. Wake up, run five kilometers as the sun rises to light the beautiful Moscow skyline. Eat breakfast in the hall with the team, shoveling down as much food as he can before they're booted to a different building to take English lessons.

Zhenya hates those most of all. He's never been a good student, more preoccupied with thinking about the world outside instead of the world in the classroom. Alex endlessly makes fun of him for speaking like a hick, his own flawless Moscow accent always the one put on the radio for promotional spots. Zhenya mostly doesn't care; he doesn't want to be in the spotlight and as long as people understand what he's saying, he doesn't care how he says it. Russian at least makes sense. English is a mess from the top down.

They weight train by the lake until lunch, followed by intensive review of what precious little video they have of the Canadians. Coach walks them through strategy after strategy, and Zhenya fills an entire notebook with notes. He's not good with book studying, but he knows hockey better than he knows himself, and he can spend hours thinking about it. Maybe the dumb brute myth is true after all.

Most nights they eat dinner in the cafeteria, but on Sundays they're allowed to go into the city. Zhenya usually just takes advantage of the empty room to jerk off. He doesn't know when Alex does it and he doesn't really want to know.

At the end of the day, he crawls into bed exhausted and sore, his body and mind completely worn out, and sleeps.

The drills change, but the days don't. Zhenya likes the pattern. He knows where he needs to be and when he needs to be there. He can see improvement in his body and in his sloppy, childish essays. He is a part of the system, a gear that turns the crank of the Red Machine. He's doing what he's supposed to.

\---

A week before they can finally, _finally_ start skating again, Coach has them all over for dinner. His wife, Nina, fusses over all of them one at a time, asking after families and about their english lessons. When Nina wraps Zhenya up in a hug, her perfume is the same one she's always worn and she still gives him an extra squeeze before she lets him go. Zhenya has seen more of her than his own mother in the past few years, which pings a guilty little place in his chest. He calls as often as he can, makes arrangements with the local store owners near his parents to get them deficit items when they're stocked. It doesn't feel like enough.

They have to squeeze into the kitchen and the main room, too many bodies in one small space, but the food is delicious and someone managed to buy good foreign booze. Coach and Gonch's daughters are running around between all of them, laughing and cajoling them into games of tag. Everything is warm, like a poster for a furnace, and Zhenya is a happy man. He has his place in the world and people he loves around him and a new challenge to face.

"Zhenya," Kuzy calls when Natalie pins him to the floor. "Help. I'm overpowered." Natalie screeches with joy, climbing all over him.

"Absolutely worthless," Zhenya says, scooping her up into his arms. She flails for a moment before melting into Zhenya, clutching him tight. Probably she needs to go to sleep sooner rather than later, but Zhenya likes the way she clings to him and practices her own infant English at him, whining nonsense as Zhenya drops her into Gonch's arms.

"You raised a bully," Zhenya says. Natalie clings to her father's neck and gives Zhenya a shy smile. Gonch gives her the same fond, long suffering look he always gives Zhenya before whisking her away.

"Your biological clock is ticking so loudly, I think I'll go deaf," Alex says as he shoves past Tarasenko to get into the kitchen, closer to the last of the food. "When are you finally gonna stick it in some nice girl and start the Malkin army?"

"Has Nastya let you touch her tits yet, or do you still have to look at them from a distance like the rest of us?" Zhenya laughs at the outrage on Alex's face, ducking halfhearted blows and carefully ignoring Nina's cries to avoid her fine plates. He's taller than Alex, but Alex will fight dirty at any chance, and they end up in a mutual headlock near the front hallway, knocking through the teammates around them.

"The grownups are trying to eat dinner," Gonch says, grabbing each of them by their collars. He pulls them neatly apart and steps between them. "Are you going to behave this way in Canada?"

"Probably," Zhenya says. Alex grins and Gonch sighs, abandoning them for the kitchen. "Eh. Boring old man."

"But really," Alex says, leaning against Zhenya's side. From here, they have a view of both rooms. They can see everyone all at once- Gonch and Anisimov poking through the fingerfoods, Kuzy and Bryz arm wrestling by the television, Artemi and Tarakenko politely looking through Nina's scrapbook. "You're twenty-three. When are you going to start looking for someone?"

"When do I have time to go looking for dates?" Zhenya gestures at the room pointedly. "And when am I going to have time to go on those dates?"

"When did any of us have the time?" Alex asks. "You make it. Look, you don't even have to go out. Nastya has some friends-"

"I am not going on a blind date-"

"Not now, we have to get ready to demolish Canada." Alex hugs Zhenya with one arm, shaking him a little. "But when we come back. You need a woman in your life."

"I can do my own laundry, unlike you." Zhenya slips free of Alex's hold on him and adjusts his shirt. Alex presses his lips together, the gears visibly turning in his head. Zhenya sighs. "I'm not lonely or sad or whatever it is you think I am. I don't have time for a girlfriend. It wouldn't be fair to her."

And he isn't lonely. He can't be. He's surrounded all the time by the team. If he needs to talk to someone, he can just walk down the hall and be invited in. If he's bored, there's always someone willing to entertain him. If he's horny- well, he's got his right hand. It's easier than trying to woo some poor woman into his bed, only to kick her out in the morning. The idea of having someone hold him, to touch him, to love him, is nice, but it's not something he needs.

"You keep telling yourself that."

"Zhenya," Coach calls. Zhenya doesn't hesitate to use the excuse to run away from the topic. Alex isn't the only one that's started pestering Zhenya about his ongoing lack of lovelife, but he's the most persistent.

Coach leads him into the backyard and lights them both thick, rolled cigars that smell like cherry wood. Zhenya takes a few courtesy puffs and lets it dangle from his hand. They're silent together for a long time, both of them looking up into the dark sky, where the stars are just barely visible. The air is still warm and sticky and bugs hiss in the stillness, buzzing around the windows. If Zhenya closes his eyes, he can pretend he's five years old, playing in the garden of his parent's cottage.

"I'm proud of you, Zhenya," Coach eventually says. Zhenya freezes, opening one eye. Coach puffs away at his cigar, head still tilted back. "You've come so far, boy."

"Thank you," Zhenya says around the lump in his throat. He is no stranger to affection- Coach has never been shy about giving all of them praise and words of kindness- but he's looked up to Coach since he was an eight year old, starry eyed and unknowing of all that lay ahead of him. It will always be overwhelming to hear it so directly.

"Do you have faith we're going to win?" Coach ashes his cigar off the rail of the patio and locks his old, steely eyes with Zhenya's.

"I don't know."

Zhenya wants to say yes. He wants so badly to believe that they can do it, but there's the nagging fear lingering inside of him, eating at his excitement. They're playing the _Canadians_. They've won so much already, have proven themselves over and over and over again, but Canada _made_ this game. They never played bandy. They never had to change their entire game to fit someone else's standards. They're mean and they're strong and they've played longer than the Union has. Canada will always be the top dog, and Zhenya won't really know what they're up against until they actually start.

"Tell me, Zhenya," Coach says, placing a gentle hand on Zhenya's shoulder.

"We've never played anyone like them before," Zhenya says. "We're not bigger or stronger, and we're handicapped." This time, when Zhenya closes his eyes, he thinks of his stick in his hands, the slice of ice under his feet, the absolute joy when a puck hits the back of an enemy's net. "I think we have some surprise, but after a few games they might catch on and do what we do better."

"Do you believe in your team?" Coach asks. It's a different question altogether and they both know it.

"Yes." There isn't a single player that Zhenya worries about. They're all strong. They're all smart. Of all the things Zhenya think can go wrong, his teammates don't even make the list.

"Watch them for me," Coach says. "I'm just their coach. You're their captain. They'll look to you for everything, and we need to go into this together. You're my leader, Zhenya. I need you."

"I'll do what I can." It's a weak promise, but it's all he can offer. He tries his best to be there for his boys, tries to make himself available for them if they need him, but mostly they take care of themselves. He doesn't give speeches, doesn't do anything more grand than show up and try as hard as he possibly can, but it seems to be working so far.

"I know you will," Coach says. He opens his arms and Zhenya falls into them, just like he has for over a decade. Coach squeezes him tight and Zhenya feels tears prick at the corner of his eyes. One day, he thinks, he'll be able to control the constant current of emotion that runs too close under his skin. Today is not that day. "We're going to do this together, my boy."

"We can't do it without you," Zhenya says. Since he's known him, this has been Coach's dream.

Zhenya won't let him down.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still want someone else to write this. Pls. Spare me pain. 60k of confused USSR Geno falling in love with Canadian superstar Sid. Don't make me do this.


	2. Chapter 2

There really is nothing like being on the ice. Zhenya skates long, lazy loops around the rink, his stick dangling loosely by his side. The building is cold, but he's warm underneath all of his equipment. The stands are entirely empty, but Zhenya can imagine them full of people dressed in red, cheering them on. He takes an imaginary swipe of the puck for his imaginary fans and pumps his fist in victory. 

"Do you think Kuzy is actually going to do the bird thing?" Artemi asks as he slots in next to Zhenya. His jersey is a little too big, the sleeves hanging down over his hands, the hem closer to his knees than his thighs. There's still a month to go- plenty of time for him to grow into it or for someone's grandmother to stitch it shorter. 

"If he wants to get his nose broken," Zhenya says. They pass Bryz and Andrei stretching on their lap, Bryz patiently coaching Andrei through something or other, his hands on Andrei's lower back and outer thigh. "Maybe it would look better crooked. He needs something to make his face better." Artemi snorts. 

"Nothing can fix that face." He swats absently at an errant puck that spins toward them, head up and eyes still turned towards Andrei. He stays quiet as they finish their lap, but keeps his speed at Zhenya's pace. 

They make another few silent circuits of the rink, blades cutting through the ice in almost perfect synch. Zhenya says a few words here and there to the guys they pass- remember to stretch your hips, stop stopping like that, you filthy puck hog- but mostly it's just the sound of the empty rink and the cut of their blades through the ice. Zhenya isn't what anyone would call patient, but he likes to think he's good at reading people. Artemi is bursting at the seams with something, his whole body tense and his hands fiddling inside his gloves. 

Zhenya has known Alex since he was eight, Kuzy and Bryz since he was ten. He's played with most of his boys before puberty hit them, but Artemi is someone new. Someone that hasn't fit himself into their system quite yet. He's friendly but shy, more likely to linger in the corners of conversations than to start them. He's eighteen, only five years younger than Zhenya, but he feels like a child anyway. Zhenya doesn't know how to read him yet, doesn't know how to handle what he needs. Zhenya isn’t what anyone would call subtle, and sometimes just hitting the point straight on is the best thing. 

"What?" Zhenya asks as they loop behind one of the nets. Coach and Gonch are near the bench, heads bent together over Coach's notebook, but they'll be ready to start drills soon. "Say it."

"Do you think we're ready to do this?" It comes out quickly, like he didn't really mean to say it at all. 

"Of course we aren't." Zhenya stops and leans against the raised wall. Artemi circles around to stand in front of him, shuffling foot to foot. "We're never ready until we do it. It's just another series. Fuck the Canadians."

"Fuck the Canadians," Artemi echos. He doesn't look completely comforted, but when Coach blows the whistle he races to the middle of the ice like he always does. It's a start at least. 

"Welcome home, boys." Coach pauses to let them cheer. Zhenya leans on his stick and looks over his team. The bubble of excitement inside of him grows too big to hold in and he shouts along with them. "We're going to work hard, and we're going to work smart, and we're going to show the world that we're the best." Chaos erupts again, eventually broken by the trill of a whistle. "What are all of you doing? Let's go! Sprint, sprint, sprint!"

Zhenya finds his legs again during the warmup. He's loved skating since the very first time he toddled out onto the ice. There's nothing like it in the world, nothing that makes him feel this giddy and young and _free_. He knows that in four hours his feet will be blistered and his body will be sore, but right now all he wants to do is push himself harder and harder just because he can. Just because he's here, at home on the ice, and that's what he does when he's here. 

Coach and Gonch set up cones around the rink to shrink the size to what they'll have to play on in Canada, and then they sprint again. Everything about it feels just a little wrong. Zhenya has to actually think about when he needs to stop, has to actually look down to see the barrier. It leaves him flat-footed, stumbling his stops and crashing his speed. He isn't the only one. Alex hits a cone and goes sprawling onto his stomach, taking Anisimov out with him. 

"Well," Coach says after the last whistle is blown. "Let's start there, huh?" 

Zhenya skates until he feels sick and then skates some more. Today is the easiest day they'll have. Coach always breaks them in slow, but they don't have too long before they have to play. He's so focused on the drills that he almost misses the man standing by the bench.   
Coach doesn't. He gives them their next round of instructions and takes off his whistle, handing it over to Gonch. Zhenya lingers at the back of the team, waiting his turn for the drill and eavesdropping. 

"Gonch, take over." Coach squeezes Gonch's arm once before skating to the bench, his head held high and his shoulders back, like he's about to present to a general. Zhenya tries to watch, but Gonch taps him on the ankle with his stick and gestures towards the far net. 

"Let's go," he shouts, herding Zhenya down the ice with his body. "On the whistle."

Coach doesn't come back before they finish. 

\---

Three weeks before their flight to Canada, just a little over a month before they finally, _finally_ play the Canadians, Coach has them all over for dinner again. 

They're all high off the post workout, starving and aching and vibrating with anticipation. Zhenya has dreams about what Canada will be like every night, spends his entire days replaying ten hours worth of footage over and over in his mind. Everything else in the world has faded into blackness, hidden behind the bright shining constellation of these seven single games. Zhenya doesn't know what will happen after. He doesn't care. 

Nina fusses over all of them in turn, stuffing them full of food and kissing their cheeks. She hovers with Artemi for a long time, still with him after Zhenya's refilled his drink twice. They aren't allowed to drink often, and Zhenya never wastes an opportunity that presents itself. He's on his way for refill three, a cheburek in his free hand, when Nina pulls him away from the main group of people. 

"Oh, Zhenya," she says on a soft sigh. Zhenya hastily wipes his wrist over his mouth, chasing crumbs. Nina laughs and shakes her head. Her hair is a lot grayer than it used to be, but she still wears it up in the same way she always used to. Coach's face has gotten a little saggy with age, but Nina's has only gotten sharper, finer. It still feels like she can see inside Zhenya's entire being with one glance. 

"Thank you for the food," Zhneya says. He waves his cheburek, drifting flakes of pastry over the floor. 

"I'll always cook for you. Whenever you need it." Nina rests her cool hand over Zhenya's wrist and looks up at him with those sharp eyes. "You've grown into a fine man. Just yesterday you were a stubborn little boy sneaking pastries from the window, and now here you are. Too tall to walk into the house without ducking and about to make history." 

"You're sentimental today," Zhenya says. He sets his drink on the floor and pulls her into a one armed hug. She squeezes him once before slapping a hand on his chest and taking a step back. "Is everything okay?"

"Everyone is fine," she says, which isn't what he asked at all. She reaches up to pat his cheek, and Zhenya feels like that child again, carefree and safe. "We will always be here for you. Remember this. Now go. Drink yourself silly while you can."

"Yes, coach!" Zhenya salutes her and scoops up his cup. 

Everything is normal, everything is _fine_ , and then-

"Party crasher," Alex shouts when the buzzer rings. Most of the food is gone, and Sasha had reluctantly gone to his own apartment to retrieve a bottle of European whiskey he'd managed to barter for. They're halfway through it, and Zhenya is lightheaded with the alcohol and the company and the endless restlessness inside of him has finally turned into a dull buzz. 

"Boys," Coach shouts. "Boys!" He claps his hands together and whistles until everyone is looking at him. Zhenya, between the kitchen and the main room, leans against the wall for support. He needs another cheburek immediately. "I need all of you to pay attention. Wait here. One moment."

The apartment is weirdly silent as Coach disappears down the hall to the front door. Something sinks in Zhenya's stomach as they wait. Gonch isn't here, which is strange enough on its own, and Nina has disappeared. It's just the team, all of them shifting restlessly the longer coach is gone. Zhenya stands up straighter at the sound of footsteps. Coach shows up first and then another man walks in behind him, dressed in a three-piece suit and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. 

"That is fucking Vsevolod Bobrov," Anisimov hisses. As if Zhenya needed to be told. The apartment takes a collective breath, silence ringing against the walls as Bobrov stands in the middle of the main room and looks them all over. 

"I have had the great honor and pleasure of coaching you boys for years," Coach says into the tense, uncomfortable air. He stands next to Bobrov, in his ever-present tracksuit, whistle still hanging from his neck. "All of you are fine men, and even better hockey players. I have no doubt that you are going to beat the Canadians and make all of us proud."

"Coach-" Artemi steps forward, into the bubble they had all left in middle of the room. Coach waves him off with a shaky hand. 

"You are fine young men with all of your years ahead of you," he says. His voice wavers and Zhenya knows. In that moment, he knows that something has gone terribly, impossibly wrong. "But my years are behind me. I will not be your coach from here on out."

The room breaks into commotion. Zhenya is frozen, his dizzy mind unable to pick an emotion other than fuzzy emptiness. This has always been Coach's dream. This was always supposed to be his victory, their gift back to him. If he isn't part of it, what's the point? If he isn't part of it, what will happen to this part of Zhenya's family?

"Enough," Bobrov says. His voice slices through the room, low and calm and soft. For the first time, Coach lowers his head in deference. For the first time, Coach looks old. "I am Vsevolod Mikhailovich Bobrov. I will be your coach for the upcoming games against the Canadians. You will address me as Vsevolod Mikhailovich. I suggest you enjoy yourselves tonight. This silliness is over tomorrow."

Bobrov turns and leaves, the click of his shoes against the hardwood the only sound in the apartment. Zhenya feels the burn of alcohol at the back of his throat, feels the rush of sick coming up, feels too much all at once. Coach stands alone in the middle of the apartment, head bowed, and the front door slams shut.


	3. Chapter 3

The shine of Bobrov's amazing achievements in hockey fade quickly. He runs drills like an army captain, shouting and clipped and machine-like. There are no more breaks for the team to talk, no more breaks for the team to ask questions or get clarification. There are no questions. Only drill after drill after drill, from the crack of dawn until they're allowed to finally collapse into bed. 

The barracks used to feel like home. Team dinners were family dinners, and every room was always open for company to play chess or talk. Curfew was heavily suggested, but never really enforced as long as everyone was inside the building. These days, Zhenya feels like he's trapped inside the grey walls of a prison, only able to see the sun in transit from one building to another. 

Bobrov stations monitors in the halls. At nine PM sharp, a mere two hours after dinner starts, they're all to be back in their rooms. Sleepovers are over. Alcohol is forbidden. One of Bobrov's men search through their rooms and takes their own bought bottles away, along with their keys and their imported snack foods. Sasha, the best connected person in all of Moscow, nearly starts a riot when his fiercely hoarded collection of cigars is confiscated. 

There are no more outings to the city. There's no energy left to go into the city. The guys with wives and children have been relegated to every-other-day phone calls. Zhenya watches everyone slowly deflate as the days go by, silent. He watches his men turn into robots day by day, unable to do anything but toe the line. They are all replaceable in Bobrov's army. There can be no family here. 

"Today, you learn to fight," Bobrov announces in the middle of one week. They're all tired and cranky and restless, dressed in their tracksuits instead of their skates. Zhenya doesn't know where they are. Driving privileges had been one of the first things revoked. There is the wheezing team bus and nothing else. "The Canadians are animals, and all of you need to learn to protect yourselves."

A man with thick leather gloves teaches each of them how to throw a punch into a bag, teaches them how to duck and read body language. Zhenya doesn't want to learn how to fight. He wants to learn how to put the puck in the back of the net, wants to know how to skate faster, wants to know how to handle a rough hit over how to take a thrown punch. He stays quiet, though. Puts on his own thick leather gloves and swings wildly at Artemi's startled face with no real intention to connect. 

"You are not friends here," Bobrov shouts after Kuzy taps Bryz gently on the side of the face. He grabs Kuzy's arm and jerks him around to face the rest of the team. "Kuznetsov, if one of the Canadians fight you, you will not play games with them. You will win, and then you will play hockey. Do you understand me?"

"Sir, yes sir," Kuzy says. Zhenya sees his arm move to make a salute, but Bobrov's fingers sink into Kuzy's skin hard enough to turn it white. 

"Hit him," Bobrov says to Bryz, still holding Kuzy's arm with one hand. 

Next to Kuzy- sweating and shirtless, tracksuit pants hanging off his hips- he looks like a business shark, his pressed suit and slicked back hair immaculate even as the humidity rises in the tiny gym. Bryz doesn't move and Bobrov yanks Kuzy closer. Zhenya's blood boils, rage filling all the quiet places inside of him, but there's nothing he can do. He's a replaceable part in the machine. If he makes a fuss, someone quieter will just take his place. He stares down at his own gloves and waits for the whip crack bang of Bryz's fist against Kuzy's face. 

"Again!" Bobrov shouts. Another crack of skin against leather, a sharp sound from Kuzy. Zhenya squeezes his eyes shut tighter. They just have to make it to the end of the series. They just have to buck up for a few more months. "Again!" 

"How is he supposed to score with his eye swollen shut?" Alex's voice, angry and too close. Zhenya reaches out blindly to grab him, holding him back from getting closer. Bobrov is their master, but Alex has never learned to bow to anyone. It's the longest fight Zhenya has ever had with anyone. Alex needs to learn how to keep his mouth shut. 

"Come here," Bobrov snaps. Zhenya opens his eyes as he releases Alex. Sick turns in his stomach as he watches Alex stroll up to them, head held high, shoulders back. A proud man willing to die on a hill he never should have climbed. "Kuznetsov, hit him."

For a long moment, they just stare at each other. Alex doesn't raise his hands in the sloppy block he's been pretending to learn and Kuzy doesn't step towards him. The room loses air until Zhenya feels like he's choking on the tension. Bobrov grabs Kuzy's right hand and yanks his glove off, throwing it into the far corner of the room. His cheek is shiny red, the corner of his eye already a little puffy. Zhenya will spend the night bringing him ice and pestering him into actually using it. 

"I said hit him." Bobrov takes a single step back and crosses his arms over his chest. Zhenya hates him. Zhenya hates no one, is always told he's too kind for his own good, but he _hates_ Bobrov with a fiery passion that burns under his ribcage. Coach would have never done this to them. Coach would have never asked this of them. "Now, Kuznetsov!"

Zhenya holds his breath as Kuzy winds up and swings. His bare fist hits Alex solidly in the cheek, knocking him off balance. The gym is so quiet that Zhenya thinks everyone else must be holding their breath, too. Alex spits onto the mat and rubs his hand against his reddened cheek, looming over Bobrov like size alone means anything at all, but Bobrov just stares from behind the thick lenses of his glasses, already five steps ahead of them. 

Zhenya hits Artemi in the shoulder and the stomach and the side for the rest of the lesson, but he doesn't pull his punches. Bobrov watches and they perform. 

\---

Zhenya is bored with cabbage, which is something he never thought could happen. He pokes at the limp pile on his plate and wishes for his mother's oliver salad. He's excited to try the food in Canada, but honestly he'd be excited to try food from the floor as long as it wasn't cooked in this kitchen. He sighs and eats it anyway. 

"We're getting little Artemi laid in Canada," Alex says as he and Sasha sit on either side of Zhenya, shaking the table and boxing him in. Zhenya elbows them both until they give him room, ignoring Alex's too-loud complaints in his ear. "You're so rude. I don't know why I- the best friend in the world- bother with you."

"I really wish you wouldn't," Zhenya says around a mouthful of tough beef. Sasha makes a face at him and Zhenya opens his mouth wider as he chews. 

"You're disgusting," Alex says, delighted. "As I was saying before I was assaulted, we're getting Artemi laid in Canada, and if I've got time I'm getting you laid, too." Alex shovels his food into his mouth like an animal. Zhenya raises his eyebrows at Sasha, but Sasha is loyal to Alex above even God. "Yes, thank you my best friend, I will gladly fall all over myself for you for doing me this favor."

"I don't need your help to get laid," Zhenya says. He doesn't. He's smart and funny and has a great body. He just doesn't like the hassle. "And anyway, what makes you think Comrade Bobrov is even going to let us out long enough to do any fucking?"

"The genius on your left has already come up with a plan-"

"Speak of the devil," Sasha says quietly. Alex shuts up immediately, his head snapping up to look at the doors. 

And Bobrov is there, hands folded behind his back, his suit too much for the messy, worn-in dining room. He never eats with them. Zhenya takes another bite of soggy cabbage and wonders if _he_ gets to eat anything other than this crap. The room falls silent as the team notices him, awkward and uncomfortable, like they've been caught doing something. 

"Tonight, you are allowed to gather in one room to keep yourselves awake," Bobrov says, like they're a group of schoolboys being given a treat. "From tomorrow until the second half of the series, we'll be running on Montreal time. Morning run at one in the afternoon. Lights out at five in the morning. The schedule remains the same. Today will be a rest day, but no one sleeps until five."

He doesn't even give them time for questions, just turns on his heel and leaves. Gonch shakes his head and follows after him and then the room explodes. 

"This is bullshit," Alex says, kicking the leg of the table hard enough to slosh food onto it. "The one night we can have a party and we didn't have enough notice to get booze."

"Really?" Zhenya asks. "That's what you're mad about?" Alex waves a hand. 

"We were going to have to get used to the time change anyway. Who cares?" He leans over Zhenya and lowers his voice to something other people would call normal speaking volume. "Sasha, you think you can get ahold of Gena?" 

"It's six o'clock," Sasha says. He's barely eaten any of his food. "Whatever he had is long gone. We can go raiding. They had to put our stash somewhere."

"And if we're raiding, we won't be sleeping," Alex says. Zhenya shoves him off and gives up on the rest of his dinner. "It's our duty."

"I don't hear any of this," Zhenya says. "I'm your captain and I can't know what dumb shit you two do." 

"You're so boring. Sasha, tell him he's boring." 

"Don't bring whatever you find back to the room." Zhenya gets up and grabs his plate. "I don't want to be involved."

"Canada," Alex shouts as Zhenya leaves the cafeteria. He's the absolute worst person in the world. 

Zhenya burns time doing his English homework, plodding slowly through the book he's been assigned. Alex and Sasha burst in twice to gather supplies, Kuzy and Artemi not far behind them. When Zhenya's eyes are burning, he puts his homework away, sticks the desk chair under the handle of the door, strips out of his tracksuit, and crawls into bed. 

He's got hours to burn and nothing to do and the room to himself. He's never been one to deny himself or draw things out. If he wants something, and it's in his ability to get it, he does. He reaches down and palms his dick, half hard and not quite there yet. It firms up under his hand as he reaches into his memory for the last time he had hooked up. 

Her name was Natasha, and she'd had long, dark hair that tickled against his thighs as she sucked him off. He steals some of Alex's imported lotion off their shared nightstand and wraps his hand around his cock, giving it a long, slow stroke as he remembers the soft shape of Natasha's tits, as he remembers the wet heat of her mouth on him. 

He hasn't fucked anyone in almost a year. He's been too busy winning games and medals and championships. He's been too distant thinking of the next challenge to make small talk with pretty girls on the street. He's tired of playing the game. Sex is good- he can feel it right now, the sad echo of another hand on his cock, a mouth, a wet cunt squeezing around him- but he wants the stupid squishy feelings, too. He wants to smile at dumb stories about waiting in line at the store, wants to wait in line for the telephone to hear the missing, longing tones of someone else's voice. He wants to _feel_ something. 

His dick isn't cooperating with him. He tries to remember they way Natasha moaned as he ate her out, he tries to remember the way she tasted and the way she smelled and the way she'd fallen over herself to sit on his cock, but nothing is working for him. In the end, he gives up. He's left frustrated and still vaguely horny and a little pissed off. Maybe he'll take Alex's offer. Getting off is worth the endless teasing he's sure he's going to get. 

It's tempting to close his eyes and go to sleep. It would be easy. He's got the feeling there will be room checks tonight though, and no amount of sleep is worth getting chewed out over. He hauls himself into a cold shower and then heads to Artem's room to join the preferans game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone doing this weird ride with me! Also, uh, update schedule? Regulated chapter lengths? Those- those don't exist here. Sorry about that.


	4. Chapter 4

They're visited four times in a week by politicians. Zhenya works his hardest through practice, but he can't help feeling like a trained bear doing tricks. They don't talk to him, which is a relief at least. 

Two days before they fly out, Sasha is kicked off the team. Everyone is stunned into silence. Zhenya closes his eyes- if he doesn't see it, it can't be real. When he opens them again, Sasha is storming furiously toward the barracks. There is no explanation given, but Zhenya suspects that the raid hadn't gone unnoticed. Alex's fallen face says as much. 

Rage swells through Zhenya. Sasha is one of their best players. Sasha is an important part of their system. Sasha is his _family_. Bobrov fucked them over for a petty bottle of booze and made their brother homeless. Purposeless. 

Practice is a silent, tense thing. They play sloppy, all of them trying too hard to cover the ground Sasha had, and Bobrov yells and they all tense up more. Zhenya nearly gets into a fist fight with Kuzy and Andrei has to break them up when they crash into his net. It's ugly and cruel and not hockey at all. 

Zhenya puts his boxing gloves on when he gets back to his room and punches the wall until he can't draw in enough breath to continue. He wants to scream. This was Coach's dream. They were going to win this to pay him back for raising them. He was supposed to _be here_. Zhenya throws off his gloves and gets dressed in his street clothes. He needs answers and he needs them now. 

"Where are you going?" Alex asks as he walks in. He has one of Sasha's sweaters folded over his arm, his face red and tired. 

"To see Coach." Zhenya struggles to get his nails under the swollen windowsill. Bobrov leaves for his own apartment before lights out. He's long gone, and dawn is just starting to break. 

"If you get caught, I'm not covering for you," Alex says. "This is stupid."

"Yeah, well." Zhenya grunts as he finally gets a good grasp on the window and hauls it up. "Fuck. I don't care." He awkwardly shuffles out backwards and drops onto the grass. 

The complex looks strange. Too still. Too quiet. Zhenya tucks his hands into his pockets, ducks his head, and starts trudging through the muddy yard to reach the street, looking over his shoulder for Bobrov's dogs. He's been to Coach's house more times than he can count, but it feels strange to be going by himself. 

The air is damp and cool, early morning birds chirping and above him. It's a twenty minute walk, but Zhenya's anger fades away quickly, morphing into shame. What had they done to make Coach leave them? What had they done to deserve Bobrov?

Zhenya enters Coach's apartment building and takes the stairs up, sweating underneath his thin t-shirt. He shouldn't have come. Begging Coach to come back and take care of them like children is- well, childish. Coach has his reasons. Zhenya shouldn't ask. He _shouldn't_ , but he still finds himself knocking gently on the door. If he wakes Tatyana, he'll be in trouble for more than just breaking curfew. 

"Zhenya," Nina says as the door swings open, her voice high with surprise. "It's early. What are you doing here?" She ushers him inside, waiting next to him as he takes off his muddy shoes and sets them on the mat. "Is everything alright?"

"Everyone's fine," Zhenya says. No one's injured, at least. "Is Coach awake?" Nina looks at him for a long moment before brushing a quick kiss over his cheek and heading down the hall. 

"That man never sleeps," she says, her voice fading as she gets farther away. "Sit. I'll bring you both tea." 

Without the crush of too many bodies in the apartment, Zhenya can see all the new treasures Coach must have picked up from his travels on the mantle, can see the fray around the carpet tacked up onto the wall. Zhenya remembers the triumph on Coach's face when he had gotten it- real Persian, he'd said, unrolling it for all of them to see. Zhenya had been eleven, and he hadn't understood why Nina had cried when Coach had given it to her. He's grown up a lot since then. 

"Zhenya," Coach says as he enters the room. In his robe and bare feet, he looks like nothing more than a small old man. It's upsetting. "Is everything alright?" Nina brings them two cups of tea, kisses the bald spot at the top of Coach's head, and leaves them. "Zhenya?"

"He's awful," Zhenya says, words tripping over themselves. "He has us locked up like prisoners and he made Kuzy punch Alex in the face, and he kicked Sasha out. _Sasha_."

"Zhenya." Coach lays a careful hand over Zhenya's wrist. His eyes are soft, the creases around his mouth too deep. "Breathe, boy. Is everyone alright?"

They're alive. No one has anything broken or sprained or twisted. But Alex has been a pit of fire and Kuzy has stopped talking at all during practice and Artemi has stopped skipping up the ice at the starting whistle. They're all healthy, but Zhenya doesn't think they're alright. 

"No one's injured."

"Then you will carry on." Coach squeezes Zhenya's wrist before sinking back into the couch, his hands wrapped around the chipped tea cup. "All of you are excellent hockey players. All of you are strong. You will train and you will play and then you will have a new team with a new coach." He closes his eyes and sighs. Zhenya looks down into his mug, feeling small and immeasurably immature. 

"You aren't coaching the Army either?" He asks, horrified. Coach sighs again and sets his tea down in favor of a cigarette. The stale smoke mixes with the sweet jam in the tea and Zhenya's stomach turns. 

"I'm not coaching anywhere," Coach says. The cherry at the end of the cigarette makes his whole face glow red, the shadows under his eyes darker. 

"Coach-"

"I am not your coach anymore," Coach says sharply. He presses his hand to his jaw before shaking his head. Zhenya hunches in on himself, forcing his fingers to unclench from around the delicate glass of his mug. "I'm not your coach. My name is Anatoli. I think you're old enough to use it now."

"Anatoli," Zhenya says. It feels like calling his father Vladimir. Coach is too big a man, too big a person, to have something as common as a regular name. "Why? You're the best coach in the world. We need you."

"You need nothing, Zhenya." Coach lights a second cigarette and offers it over. Zhenya doesn't like the way the smoke tastes, but he realizes his hands are shaking. He sets his tea down and takes a drag from it, coughing on his first inhale. "You are a leader, and a grown man. You will see so many challenges in your life, and this will be just one of them. I was never going to be there to hold your hand forever. Things have just sped up more than I would like them to."

"Co- Anatoli, why aren't you coaching us anymore? Did you choose to leave? Are you sick?" Zhenya takes another shaky drag and feels the dizziness of nicotine rushing up into his head. He stares at the worn pattern of the rug and remembers playing on it with Alex and Sasha when he was young. He's seen more of Coach than his own father, and now- his family is torn and he can't do anything about it. 

For a long moment, Coach is silent. Zhenya can't look at any part of him other than his house slippers. Everything is- heavy. The air, the taste of the smoke, Zhenya's heart. He startles when Coach stands up. He stays seated as Coach takes two glasses and a labeless bottle from the cabinet under the television. He accepts the glass of dark whiskey handed to him without a fuss. 

"They wanted us to throw the Czech game." Coach takes a long drink and shakes his head. "Fucking politics."

Sick rises in Zhenya's throat. He remembers that game. They were going to go to the gold medal game no matter what. They could have lost. He remembers Coach being quiet at practice, quiet in the locker room before the game. He hadn't been quiet on the bench. Zhenya tries to imagine losing on purpose. Zhenya tries to imagine Coach making them do it. He can't for either. 

"I couldn't let _politics_ ruin everything I've taught you," Coach says. "I knew this would be the price." He closes his eyes and raises his glass again. It's rot whiskey, but Zhenya drinks his down, too. Alex and Sasha will be so mad. 

"I'm sorry," Zhenya says. Coach waves his hand. 

"Sometimes, you have to sacrifice to follow your dream. And my dream has come true. We will play the Canadians and the world will know how great we are." Coach looks up at the clock and shakes his head. "Time to go home, Zhenya. Before you get us all into trouble." 

Zheny finishes his whiskey and cigarette, enjoying vices he didn't even think he would have time to miss, and waves goodbye to Nina, already preparing breakfast in the kitchen. After he's put his shoes back on, he hesitates for a moment before pulling Coach into a hug. 

"Go win for the Union," Coach says, patting Zhenya's back gently. "Go win for me." He squeezes Zhenya tight and steps back with wet eyes. "And have fun, Zhenya! This is the world's most beautiful game."

"I'll go into all my biggest challenges with you in mind," Zhenya says. It's a promise he intends to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy I am going to burn myself by posting too much too soon, but I already have 35k written and I want validation. Also, Sasha being removed from the team killed me, too and I wrote the damn thing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GONNA BURN MYSELF BY POSTING TOO MUCH TOO FAST. Also, I am a greedy person and if you didn't comment on last chapter, you should do that and another here. The validation keeps the words going.

Zhenya's never flown for this long before. He hates flying- he's too big to fit properly and the dry air makes his mouth dry and his throat hurt. He tries to read and he tries to sleep and he plays cards with Artem and Gonch, but it feels like he's been trapped for weeks. After hour ten, he starts pacing up and down the aisle to work out some of his pent up energy. 

They're still so far away- hundreds of miles to go and four long days until they play their first game. Zhenya isn't any more prepared than he was weeks ago, but he can feel the excitement and anticipation finally growing inside him with each agonizing mile. He feels like he's going to vibrate straight out of his skin, right out of the plane. 

"Sit," Gonch says as Zhenya passes him again. He tips his head to the side, where Bobrov is sleeping peacefully across the aisle. "There will be hell to pay if you wake him up."

"There's always hell to pay," Zhenya mutters. 

"Then don't bring it on yourself anymore than you need to. Go play with Alex. We'll be there soon enough." 

Zhenya does not go play with Alex because he isn't the child that Gonch thinks he is, but he does go back to his seat. Outside of the plane, the entire world is dark except for the shining maze of stars floating by. They remind Zhenya of the one camping trip he'd taken with his father and brother before he'd been brought into the hockey program. Everything had felt so very, very big then, just the three of them and their fire and the endless wilderness around them. 

Zhenya hasn't felt small like that in a long time. He has his place in the world. He has his team and a set plan of goals to follow and a legacy already to leave behind him. The world isn't his yet, but he already has the respect of his country. He has more than so many others and yet-

Here, in the quiet of the plane, he feels alone. Hollowed out, like he's waiting for something to fill in the place that no victory can. It's the same melancholy that drives him to endless card games with Sasha and drinking too much with Kuzy and pushing, pushing, pushing until he's so tired he can't think about anything. 

He can't do any of that here, though. Almost everyone is asleep and if he gets back up Gonch will tie him to the chair. Instead he leans his head against the cool window and watches the world go by beneath them, nodding off and waking back up in tiny intervals that leave him more frustrated than anything else. 

When they finally, finally touchdown, Zhenya nearly runs off the plane and into the terminal. He's exhausted and his body is sore and he's got a bad case of dry mouth. It's not until he's standing outside on the unfamiliar street, hit hard like always by the difference from home, that he can even think it. 

They're really here. This is Canada. 

They load into a bus, swamped with their bags and gear, and it's like all the tiredness has left Zhenya's body. He doesn't press his face against the glass like Artemi, who hasn't left the country before, but he does watch the people on the street as they drive by. He's always surprised most by the clothes. 

"Think I can get Nastya to wear one of those?" Alex asks as he leans over Zhenya to point at a girl in a tiny skirt that barely touches the top of her long, tan thighs. Even some of the men are wearing short shorts and long socks that climb up their calves. 

"Not if you want her mother to let you into the house ever again," Zhenya replies. There are _bluejeans_ everywhere, too. Zhenya has exactly one pair of bluejeans that he only wears when he's feeling extravagant. He'd actually had to wait in line for them. He can talk half of the city into giving him cuts and holding things back for him, but Demetri at the clothing shop can't be bought with love or money. 

"Ah, but I have an apartment," Alex says. Zhenya shoves him off. "Oh, Zhenya. We will buy so many treats to bring home with us. Who cares if we win? We bring back some of those dresses over there and all the men at home will call us real heroes." Bobrov claps his hands at the front of the bus and Alex slumps into his seat. 

"While you are here, you are representing your country," Bobrov says. "You will follow the schedule set for you. You will be gentlemen. You will win games." If Coach had said that, they'd all be cheering. Instead, the bus is silent. "You are allowed three hours a day in the city. You will never go alone. You currently each have your own room. If one of you violates our trust, your privileges will be revoked. This is work. This is not a holiday. Am I understood?"

"Understood," Zhenya mumbles along with everyone else. When he looks over his shoulder at Kuzy, he can already see the gears turning. If Sasha were here- Zhenya cuts the thought off. It's not worth it to wonder about what Sasha's doing or if he'll be with them ever again. 

"Fucker," Alex says under his breath as Bobrov takes his seat again. 

"Motherfucker," Zhenya agrees. They're here, and Bobrov is still tainting everything. "So, when do we show Canada how the Soviets party?"

"Ah, Zhenya, I knew you were my favorite under all that angst," Alex says, sweet like butter wouldn't melt on that idiotic fast tongue of his. "Tonight we gather the boys."

Zhenya stares at the back of Bobrov's head and tries not to let the bitterness eat him from the inside out. Coach is the one who deserves to be there, bent over the scouting reports he'd made himself. Coach should be the one to show them this strange place that he'd already scoped out. Zhenya can't drag him across the ocean, but he can win games and silently fuck Bobrov over outside of them. It's his new mission. 

\---

The hotel is gigantic outside, but on the inside it looks even bigger. It's so fancy. Everything looks new and modern, like the TV shows set in space- all curves and white surfaces and bright orange and brown wallpaper in a pattern Zhenya would love on a rug. A huge chandelier hangs over them in the main lobby as they wait around for Bobrov and Gonch to collect their keys and check them in. 

"I want to live here." Bryz flops down onto a heavily cushioned chair and stretches his legs out. "Put up a carpet or two on the wall, get a sauna, and we're good to go."

"We haven't seen the rooms yet," Artem says. He shoves Bryz's legs off the armrest. 

He doesn't know what makes him look away from the bickering, but Zhenya catches sight of what has to be some of the Canadian team. They aren't in anything that says it, not like Zhenya in his tracksuit, but Zhenya knows the shape of hockey players. There's three of them. One is tall and thin and dressed in bright orange, and beside him is a man with long hair that looks soft, even from a distance. Behind both of them, the last one walks slowly, his head down. He's not dressed as flashy as the other two, but there's something about him that Zhenya can't stop watching. 

"Everything's in French," Artemi says and Zhenya shakes himself out of his staring. "What was all the English for if everything's in French?" 

"Montreal will be the only French place," Gonch says as he hands out the room keys. "Your homework is still due every day. Try to keep that in mind."

"You don't have to do any homework," Zhenya grumbles. Gonch raises his eyebrows. 

"When you can speak like an adult in English, you can be treated like one," Gonch says, in English that's perfect as far as Zhenya can tell. Then again, what does he know? "You're captain. Be a good leader and do your homework."

"Yes, grandmother." Zhenya takes his key and the swat to his head. Numbers, at least, are the same everywhere. 

They troop up to the elevator in a group, passing the three Canadian players. Alex seems to have noticed them as well, his mouth already open to pick a fight, but Zhenya grabs him by the back of the shirt and pulls him away. He doesn't want to put out any fires just yet, and the Canadians aren't known for being nice on the ice. He doesn't want to know what they're like off of it. 

It takes three elevators to get all of them up to their floor with their stuff. Zhenya feels strange as he presses the button in his. Everything is so extravagantly nicer than it needs to be. He wonders if everywhere else will be as nice, or if this is just an elaborate ruse to make them think better of Canada. It seems to be working on Bryz, who has something to say about _everything_. 

"If you don't see me, it's because I've decided to officially move in and leave you losers behind," Bryz says as he reaches his door. 

"You won't be missed," Zhenya says as he unlocks his own room right next to it.

The room is as big as his apartment at home. Zhenya drops his bag in the main room, next to the little couch that looks too short for him to properly sit on, and pokes his head into the bathroom and then into the room with the bed. The mattress looks big enough at least and it bounces when he falls onto it. 

There's nothing to do until dinner, which is still four hours away. He turns on the television, and while the color picture is still a novelty, everything is in French, so he can't even pretend like he's doing English homework. He leaves it on for the sound as he unpacks his toiletry bag in the bathroom. This will be their longest stay for the entire trip and he figures he might as well make use of the space. 

After that, he's already bored. He doesn't think he's been alone for longer than an hour since training camp started. Even with the television on, he doesn't like the quiet. He paces the room and pokes around in the corners and looks down at the pretty courtyard from the floor-to-ceiling window and considers pulling out his actual homework just for something to do. He can hear Bryz moving around through the wall, but it's faint enough that he can't track his movements. He almost misses having Alex talking his ear off. 

"You've gone crazy," Zhenya mutters to himself. He takes one more look around the hotel room, grabs his books, and heads down to the lobby to wait for dinner. 

\---

There is a very big difference between skating on a rink that's been made smaller by cones and skating on a rink that's actually smaller. Even Zhenya is hesitant to really gather any speed, and Kuzy's gone up and over the boards four times already. Bobrov's growing anger at their fumbling is almost tangible, hanging over all of their heads and making them fumble more. 

"Perhaps," Gonch says, stepping neatly between Bobrov and Alex, who's built up an obvious tantrum just waiting to be unleashed, "we should focus this practice on relearning the rink, and then use this afternoon's practice for real drills." He slaps Alex's shin with the flat of his stick and Alex sulks off. Bobrov presses his lips together. Zhenya holds his breath until Bobrov nods. 

"We will not be doing this again," Bobrov says, looking around at all of them. "Sprints on the whistle. Go!" The whistle screams across the rink and Zhenya goes. 

At the end of their three hours of sprints, Zhenya's entire body feels like an aching ball of fire, but he has his confidence back. Kuzy had gone over two more times, but everyone else had gotten with the program, even Bryz and Andrei, weighed down with all their pads. 

Lunch is a tired hour spent trying to shove as much tasteless food into their mouths as possible. They've only been given so much from the hotel and it has to be rationed out carefully between them. Zhenya hasn't been this hungry since he was a teenager. 

"Bet they gave the fucking Canadians all the food they could eat," Alex grumbles as he shoves the wilted broccoli salad into his mouth. 

"Shut up and eat, before someone eats it for you," Zhenya snaps. He's still sweaty. Most of them had chosen to skip their showers- _showers_ in every room, how fucking weird- in favor of food. Zhenya's sure it hasn't endeared them to the staff. 

They have an hour of English lessons in the cafeteria with Gonch and then it's back to the ice, stuffed into their damp gear. There's still a little fumbling as they adjust the power of their passes, but at the end of this practice- thankfully only two hours this time- they're connecting properly again. By time the game happens, they'll be as ready as they've ever been. 

Zhenya takes his time washing off. He's going to feel every single one of his muscles tomorrow, and the day after is going to be even worse. He's so ready to actually play and make all the pain worth it. 

The bus has probably already left without him, but the hotel isn't far away and the walk is probably a good cool down for his already stiffening legs. As soon as he steps outside, he sees one of the Canadians from the lobby again, leaned against the wall a few feet away. The Canadian jumps like he's been startled before jogging towards Zhenya. 

"Hi, sorry, hi," he says as he stops. He sticks his hand out and Zhenya stares down at a moment blankly before reaching out to shake it. "I'm Sidney Crosby. I'm the captain of the Canadian team."

"Evgeni Malkin," Zhenya says dubiously. "Also captain." He drops Sidney's hand and shifts back onto his heels. 

"I've been waiting for this for a long time," Sidney says. He's speaking slowly, but not condescendingly. Zhenya eyes him over. He's big, but he's smiling, his huge shoulders hunched in a little. "I watched as many of your games from World's as I could. Your team was amazing."

"Thank you." Zhenya doesn't know what else to say. He can't read what Sidney wants from him, and he doesn't know if it's actual politeness or some kind of act to- something. Get team secrets? Make Zhenya like him so he won't play too hard against him? "We also wait long time. Will be good games." He feels clumsy and wrongfooted, but Sidney just keeps smiling at him. It's a little strange. 

"I can't wait," Sidney says. "I just wanted to meet you. See you soon!" He gives Zhenya a little wave and jogs off the way he'd come. Canadians, Zhenya decides as he walks towards the hotel, are very strange.


	6. Chapter 6

Zhenya can hear the crowd before he can see them. He steps out onto the warm, soft ice to the sound of a roar that he's never heard before playing. They expect them to fail, and for the Canadians to win so, so easily. Zhenya keeps his head up as he takes his place in line at center ice, right across from Sidney. He hopes Coach can see them. 

The Canadians don't wear helmets, which seems both stupid and insulting. Most of them have the same fluffy, layered haircut, and Zhenya has trouble telling them apart in their red uniforms. Sidney stands out with his close-cut hair and his steely eyes. Sidney, who scores a goal only thirty seconds into the game.

Carter gets another five minutes later. Zhenya's frustrated, but he can feel all of them getting used to the shitty ice, can start to see the way the Canadians play, and when Alex scores a goal from a long pass from Zhenya, it feels like they've already won the game. 

Kuzy scores them a short handed goal one minute before the period ends, and Zhenya doesn't care about how undignified he looks as he cheers from the penalty box. A few of the Canadians give him dirty looks as they go by, but it just fuels that angry, hungry pit in Zhenya's belly. 

During the second period, almost all of the Canadians have abandoned the idea of actually scoring and instead spend most of their time slamming everyone into the boards. Zhenya bites his tongue as Seabrook flattens Artemi and the referee skates by. Gonch places a hand on Zhenya's shoulder and squeezes once before sending him out. 

Sidney isn't smiling when Zhenya lines up against him for the faceoff. His eyes are cool and distant, so different from how he'd been in the parking lot. Zhenya lowers his stick and wins the puck anyway. Burns and Thornton split off to block Alex and Tarasenko and Zhenya runs through the opening before he's even finished planning his route. 

It doesn't matter though- he's got too much speed and Orly has Sidney trapped from chasing. He makes two sharp turns in the Canadians' zone and hits a shot just over Fleury's glove. Alex hugs him so tightly he nearly falls over and then breaks off to laugh right in Fleury's face. 

The arena is so hot that the sweat between Zhenya's skin and his pads is starting to chafe. He lifts his jersey up in a vain attempt to cool himself off, but it mostly just makes him feel sticky. He can see the ice melting under everyone's skates, even as Artem's line chases the puck down. If it's a ploy to make them play worse, it seems to have backfired. Keith and Richards run into each other near the bench as Zhenya hops over, and Zhenya doesn't think twice before taking the free puck and running into the Canadians' end. 

He scores his second and Fleury says a lot of things in French that probably aren't in Zhenya's favor. At least Zhenya didn't jump into the puddle next to his net like he's been wanting to for the last five minutes. 

After that, the Canadians fall apart. They get a lucky one in at the start of the third, but their defense is shaken and all of them look tired. Zhenya wipes the sweat from his face and thinks of running on the beach in the summer, a boulder in his hands. The Canadians aren't as tough as they are, and it's showing. 

Zhenya doesn't get a hat trick, as hard as he tries, but Alex scores another, and Artemi gets his first as one of them, and even Orly scores as the final minutes tick down. Zhenya bites down on the cheer built up in his chest and hops onto the foggy ice to go thank Bryz for his amazing saves. They don't take very long, but when Zhenya turns around to shake hands, the Canadians are all gone. 

"Fuckers," Alex says. He spits on the ice. "I thought Canadians were supposed to be polite?"

"They're hockey players," Zhenya says. "Better hockey, better manners." 

He follows the team back to the locker room and cleans off in the bathroom. He's overheated and starving, and they have to fly to Toronto in the afternoon. Alex and Kuzy are making noise about using their outside privileges, but Zhenya just wants to go to the hotel and sleep. 

"Come on," Alex says as they load onto the bus. "We just won and Artemi's sweet virtue is being offered up. He needs you for moral support."

"You're more than enough support." Zhenya shoves him out of his space and tries to stretch his sore legs out. He already misses the sauna. "I'm going to bed. Don't fuck the kid up too bad, we still need him."

\---

Zhenya strips out of his tracksuit as soon as he gets into his room. It's still too hot and he's planning on stripping the cover off the bed, too. It feels wrong to be playing right now, like it's still summer. He should be on the beach, not in Canada. 

He jams all of his things back into his duffle bag and calls the front desk to haltingly ask for a wakeup call before breakfast. He hears the group that's going out leave through the thin walls, Alex's voice a steady murmur as they pass Zhenya's room. Zhenya's just crawling into bed when someone knocks on his door. 

"Go away," he calls. "I already told you I'm not going!" The knock comes again and Zhenya sighs, throwing off the sheet and marching to the door and throwing it open. "What?"

"Oh, hi-" Sidney is too close, but Zhenya doesn't want to give up ground, so he stands there awkwardly, hand still on the door, mostly naked in front of his competition. "Sorry if this is a bad time."

"What you want?" Zhenya asks. He's still tired and every time he sees Sidney his head starts spinning. 

"Right. I wanted to say that the game was worth the wait." Sidney's entire face lights up. The cold, calculating person Zhenya had seen on the ice is gone, replaced by this boy that looks like nothing more than an eager child. "Your goal in the second was just- it was amazing. We've never seen some of the things you guys did."

"Yes, we win," Zhenya says, anger slowly replacing his befuddlement. "Why you're here, say this? That's why for line after game." 

"What line?" Sidney asks. This conversation doesn't look like it's going to end soon, and if Bobrov sees him talking to one of the opposition, he'll make Zhenya's life hell. Zhenya waves Sidney in and locks the door for extra measure.

"For shake," Zhenya hisses as he turns around. Sidney hesitates before he seems to get it. 

"We only do that at the end of the tournament," he says in that slow, careful way he has, like he's soothing a strange, feral animal. "Do you- do you guys do it after every game?"

"Of course. Respect, say thank you. Every game new." Zhenya crosses his arms over his chest and tries not to flinch as he hears Bobrov passing down the hall with Gonch. "Every game important, even when lose." 

"I'm sorry. We didn't know." Sidney gnaws on the side of his lower lip before sticking out his hand. Zhenya blinks down at it and slowly takes it. Sidney's palm is warm, his skin softer than Zhenya's. Sidney shakes his hand firmly twice and tilts his head back to look him right in the eye. "You played a great game. Thank you."

"You play good, too," Zhenya says. It's strange without the layers of gloves between them, without the sound of more than the hotel around them. "Thank you." 

"I'll leave you alone now, but-" Sidney lets Zhenya's hand slip from his and tucks his neatly into the pockets of his slacks. "I love hockey and I'd like to talk about how you play sometime."

"You spy?" Zhenya asks with narrowed eyes. Sidney laughs, his nose scrunching. It's like no other laugh Zhenya has heard before, high pitched and abrupt. "What?"

"I'd be a terrible spy." Sidney's smile is crooked, like maybe he'd been hit in the mouth a few too many times. It suits him. "I guess I'm a fan. I just want to talk about hockey with you."

"Maybe," Zhenya says. He doesn't know if he can handle long stretches of talking with Sidney. The short ones have been weird enough. "I sleep now, yes? Fly tomorrow."

"Right, yeah, sorry." Sidney goes for the door but turns around before he opens it. "I'm really glad this series is happening."

"Yes," Zhenya says, finally on the same page. "Me too."

\---

"This is Pascal," Bobrov says after the plane to Toronto takes off. There's a man in corduroy pants and a bright turtleneck shirt next to him, smiling vaguely at them. "He is the ambassador from the Canadian team and will be accompanying us for the rest of our time in Canada."

"They sent us a babysitter?" Alex asks, leaned over to whisper in Zhenya's ear. Zhenya, already annoyed by the badly fitting suit he's being forced to wear for travel, elbows him away before Bobrov can catch them gossiping. 

"If you need to find something, ask Pascal. If you need something from the hotels or from the rinks, ask Pascal." Bobrov levels them all with an even look from behind his glasses, a clear warning that he'll be watching them if they even think about speaking to Pascal. "You will treat him like you would a guest." Pascal clearly can't understand anything that Bobrov's saying, but he doesn't look concerned, and he smoothly takes a step forward when Bobrov nods at him.

"My name is Pascal, but feel free to call me Duper. I've been with the team for two years and I know all the places we'll be going. If you need anything, I think I'm always supposed to be in the room next to Evgeni." He looks over all of them, eyes bright and mouth turned up at the corner like there's a joke he hasn't shared. "Which of you is Evgeni?"

"Them," Alex says brightly, pointing to Zhenya and Kuzy. Bobrov's lips go white, pressed so tight he might as well be trying to make a diamond. 

"Me," Zhenya says. Duper waves one hand and Zhenya does his best not to sink into himself like a child called upon to answer a question. Thankfully, Duper sits up front next to Gonch instead of trying to join the rest of them. 

"You missed a good time last night," Alex says. The seats are always too small, and their knees are jammed together under the armrest. Alex's suit is even uglier than Zhenya's, in mint green that he had to have paid an extreme bribe for. It fits him, at the very least. Zhenya had gotten his from one of Coach's cousins, and it's both too big around his waist and too small around his shoulders. 

"The kid looks like he's going to puke all over the place," Zhenya says. And it's true. Artemi is curled up as much as he can be next to Tarasenko, head against the window. His usual chatter is an obvious absence, and Kuzy keeps leaning over the aisle to half-shout meaningless questions at him. "What did you do to him?"

"We were trying to help him become a man, but he hasn't learned to hold his liquor yet." Alex shakes his head. "You should have seen the women, Zhenya. If Nastya wasn't waiting at home for me-"

"What? You'd have annoyed them all into leaving?" Zhenya laughs at Alex's sour face and kicks at the back of Kuzy's chair when he tries to torment Artemi again.

"You're getting so boring in your old age, Zhenya," Alex sighs. His stupid grin drops and he ducks his head down, getting right into Zhenya's face. One day, Zhenya thinks with a sad sense of resignation, Alex is going to get himself beaten up for invading the wrong personal bubble. "Hey. You have to come next time. You're our captain. It's good for leadership."

"You still can't outdrink me," Zhenya says. "And I wouldn't want you to be too sick to play." He probably will go next time, if anything to save himself from the quietness of the hotel room. "If we win the next game, I'll let you buy me a drink."

"You're so generous, Zhenya. Really."

Thankfully, the flight only takes a little over an hour. Two men with big cameras and what seems like even brighter flashbulbs take photos of the team as soon as they enter the terminal, shouting something too loud and too fast for Zhenya to understand. It's blinding, and between that and Zhenya's half-asleep legs, he nearly tumbles over someone's stray luggage. Artem grabs him by the back of his stupid suit jacket and saves him from making a complete idiot of himself, but one of the men still laugh and takes another photo. 

"Forward, men," Bobrov says. Duper breaks away from their group and opens his arms wide like he's greeting old friends and speaks to them in his big, booming voice. It serves to block the team from any more photos, and they hurry towards baggage claim with as much dignity as they can. 

"Maybe he's not so bad," Gonch says lightly as Zhenya shoves his bags onto the luggage cart. There's a rip at the bottom of his gear bag that's been getting bigger and bigger every time he sees it, and he's either going to have to hunt down a needle and thread or finally buckle down and buy a new one. Maybe he'll actually be able to find something nice while they're here. 

"Or he could be a spy," Zhenya replies. Travel is making him suspicious. Gonch shakes his head and sighs. "What?" 

"Be nice," is all Gonch says. Zhenya tugs at his suit sleeves and does his best not to make a face in case the photographers are still around. He's always nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hey. Hockey.


	7. Chapter 7

They have an afternoon practice at the rink after lunch, and then they're given free reign until curfew. Zhenya strongly suspects that if they'd lost their game, Bobrov wouldn't be as generous with their time, but he's never looked a gift horse in the mouth. He trades his tracksuit in for a pair of slacks and a plaid polo that Gonch always makes fun of him for and joins the rest of the team in the hotel lobby. 

"We're going to find a pool hall," Kuzy says and Orly flashes a terrible smile that means he's going to have to be dragged out fighting. Artemi and Alex are arguing about pickup lines, each one worse than the one before.

"You're going to get us deported," Zhenya says, but he still tags along as they follow the neatly written directions Duper had given them.

Toronto is different from Montreal in a way Zhenya can't quite put his finger on, but at least he can read most of the street signs and signs above the doors. The bar Duper had sent them to isn't very fancy, but there are four pool tables lined up neatly in the middle of the main room and it's still early enough in the day that the place is mostly empty. They get a few once overs as Alex makes his way to the table closest to the bar- their clothes don't fit in quite right, and all of them except Artemi have kept their hair cut shorter than most of the men here- but no one seems to want to bother them. 

"Zhenya, come show the child how to rack," Orly says. Artemi scrunches his nose and pointedly takes a drink of whatever beer Kuzy has supplied the booth with. Probably, Zhenya thinks, they should make an effort to speak English in public. Then again, only Gonch has a passable accent, and he's not here to play buffer. 

He does show Artemi the right way to rack before wiping the floor with him to everyone else's amusement. Canadian beer tastes terrible, but actual piss would be better than Sasha's rot, and it's been so long since Zhenya's been able to drink anything at all that he downs his first bottle in three long pulls. He plays one more quick game against Orly, which is much more difficult to win, before handing his stick over to Kuzy. 

"You have an admirer," Alex says. He points the neck of his beer to the bar and Zhenya looks before he can stop himself. A woman in a tiny, shiny skirt and a shirt with fluffy pink trim along the collar and cuffs is, in fact, looking over at them. She's pretty in what his mother always called _that terrible Western way_ , but not interesting enough to go talk to. 

"Sic her on Artemi," he says. 

"Zhenya." Alex frowns and Zhenya sighs. "I can see she's not wearing anything under that skirt from all the way over here, and I'd bet my entire ration card that she'd let you fuck her in the bathroom."

"Some of us have standards," Zhenya sniffs. 

"And some of us aren't pansies," Alex shoots back. He sets his bottle on the table, grabs Zhenya's out of his hand, and finishes it off before Zhenya can yell at him. "Oh no, we're out of beer. Let's go get some more."

The good mood that Zhenya's been riding drops away. He doesn't want to fuck some stranger he's never going to see again in a disgusting bar bathroom at four in the afternoon. He might have, a few years ago, but he'd rather go back to his hotel room and watch TV in English than go through all the motions just to be alone with a wet dick after. 

"You go get more," he says. He gets up from the booth and tosses down what he's pretty sure is a five dollar bill onto the table. "I'm going to see if I can find somewhere to buy jeans." 

Alex doesn't call after him, but Zhenya can feel the heavy weight of his disappointment all the way out the door. Once he's on the street, his little shopping trip seems less like a good idea. He stands out even more on the street alone, taller than everyone passing him, in his foreign clothes and with his foreign hair. He knows, vaguely, what direction the hotel is in, but he doesn't even know where to start looking for a clothes shop. 

It's too late to change his mind now, though. He picks a direction at random and tries to look as inconspicuous as possible. The day is warm and the city is pretty in any case. If anything, the walk should be nice. He's four blocks away, looking in through the window of a bakery at a cake layered high with swirling designs when someone taps him on the shoulder. 

Zhenya probably shouldn't be surprised to see Sidney standing there, but he still is. Sidney smiles at him from under the brim of his flat cap, rocking back onto his heels. Zhenya looks around them, like maybe the rest of the Canadians will be lurking in wait to- what? Beat him up? Break his legs? It looks like it's just Sidney, though, and Zhenya calms. 

"You come after me?" He asks. 

"What? No." Sidney points across the street to a building tucked neatly between two houses, the storefront almost invisible. "I was in there and I thought I saw you. You kind of stick out."

"Yes," Zhenya says tightly. He absently tugs at the hem of his shirt and wishes he'd worn something plainer. "I know."

"No, no- I mean- You're really tall." Sidney takes his hat off and fiddles with it before putting it back on his head. At least he seems to be as awkward as Zhenya feels, too. "Uh. I just. Wanted to say hi."

"Hi, yes, hello," Zhenya says. Sidney is… nice in his strange way, but outside of going over the last game, there isn't anything for them to talk about. Zhenya steps around him and lifts one hand in a half-hearted wave. "Okay, goodbye."

He still doesn't know where he's going, but he stands at the corner light and tries to figure out which street might have the most shops from the name alone. He thinks he's heading in the right direction- there's been fewer houses and more restaurants, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. If he doesn't find a clothes shop soon, he'll wave down a taxi and go back to the hotel. Alex will make fun of him for getting lost, but Zhenya's long used to that. 

"The hotel isn't that way," Sidney says as they wait for the light together. Zhenya looks down at him and sighs. 

"Not hotel," he says. "Look for clothes."

"Oh," Sidney says. "That's not this way either." Zhenya bites down on his frustration and takes a breath to push it down. "What kind of clothes? I can show you where I shop when I'm here. It's easier because of-" His cheeks go pink as he cuts himself off. It's strangely charming to see him, finally, at a loss for words.

"Because why?" Zhenya asks. He's going to go wherever Sidney sends him, if anything because he has no other options. 

"Because of, you know, the-" He waves his hand down by his hip and Zhenya sees, for the first time, the giant curve of his ass. It's- Zhenya tears his eyes away and refuses to let himself look back down again. Something fizzes low in his stomach. Maybe he's hungrier for dinner than he thought. "Do you want me to show you the way?" 

Sidney's face has gone from pale pink to bright red. If Zhenya knew him better, or if he knew the right words in English, he might tease him for it. He doesn't know either, so he just turns his eyes back toward the road and clears his throat. His mouth is suddenly very dry. 

"Yes, okay." 

With a goal in mind, Sidney's awkwardness fades away. He steers them back the way Zhenya had came, but thankfully takes a turn before they're too close to the bar. Zhenya makes the appropriate sounds as Sidney points out landmarks, but it's harder to understand him with all the noises from the street. They end up in a small store with twin mannequins in bright, patterned dresses standing guard on either side of the door. 

It's always strange shopping in a different country. There are no lines winding out the door, no deficit signs in the windows, no people shouting over the last wanted item. The shelves are always full inside. At home, the stores are almost always completely empty by Friday. At home, there isn't nearly as much different stuff on the shelves even when they are full. It's- overwhelming, sometimes. 

"Sidney," the woman behind the counter calls as they walk in. "Already back? Greg's out, but we can call him back if you need more tailoring."

"I'm just here with a friend," Sidney says. He tugs his hat down, clearly flustered, and Zhenya doesn't try to stop himself from laughing, or taking another long look at Sidney's ass. He wonders if Sidney always has to get his pants tailored, or if he just prefers the skin-tight fit that the ones he's wearing now give him. "We're going to-" Sidney waves at the racks and herds Zhenya away from the counter. 

"You live here?" Zhenya asks as they pass a stand of shiny, ruffled shirts that Alex would kill a man for. The two other people in the store are giving Sidney admiring glances that mean they recognize him as their little national treasure. Then again, Sidney doesn't seem to be bothered by attempting to make friends with complete strangers.

"No, but we come here a lot for games." Sidney stops suddenly and Zhenya nearly runs him over. He grabs Sidney's shoulders and carefully takes a step back. Sidney doesn't even blink. "What are you looking for?"

"Don't need help for shop," Zhenya says. Grab clothes, hand over money. It's simple enough to do without much speaking, and unless Sidney can get him a decent discount, he's pretty sure he can handle it from here. 

"Oh," Sidney says. He shrinks in on himself, shoulders hunching. "Right. Sorry. I'll see you tomorrow." Zhenya _doesn't_ need help to shop, but Sidney just looks so- pathetic. Zhenya closes his eyes and counts to ten. Coach always said the best thing Zhenya knew how to do was take care of strays, and apparently Sidney's going to be one of them. 

"Want jeans," he says. "Can't buy at home." Sidney flashes him a crooked, toothy smile and hustles Zhenya down toward the other side of the store. 

They pick through the selection together quietly. Sidney keeps looking over at Zhenya and frowning, picking up pairs of jeans before carefully folding them and putting them back onto the shelf. The fourth time he does it, Zhenya sighs and adds another pair to his stack to try on. 

"What?"

"Your legs are so long," Sidney says. "What size do you wear?"

"Don't know." Zhenya shrugs. "Is different size everywhere. I just try." 

"What's-" Sidney stops and fusses with the jeans he just perfectly folded. When he doesn't finish, Zhenya throws a pair of bellbottoms at him and mimics folding with his hands. Sidney does it without even looking at them. Zhenya's mother would love him. 

"What's what?" 

"What's it like shopping in Russia?" He says it quietly, like he's asking for state secrets. Zhenya's heard people whisper about how _oppressive_ his home is, how _terrible_ it must be to live there. He doesn't understand, and it mostly makes him angry whenever he hears anyone speak poorly of it. It's his _home_. It's his way of life, and everyone that mocks it can eat dirt. 

"Lot of lines. Sometimes store only have little bit, so need to wait for later." Zhenya gathers up his pile of jeans and reaches over the shelf for a hideous, neon shirt with ruffles running down either side of the button closure. Alex will love it. "I know many people. Sometimes get store hold things. Sometimes people save me-" He doesn't know the word for _deficit_ in English, doesn't even know how to explain it right. "From other country, you know?"

"Imports?"

"Maybe?" Zhenya shrugs again. It's not like he knows. "I buy when we play. Bring best gift for friends." He needs to find something with the Canadian flag on it to bring back to Coach. Something to prove his team was there, even if he wasn't. "This?" He holds up the shirt and Sidney makes a face. "Yes. Bad. But Alex like. So I give."

"That's nice," Sidney says. Zhenya makes a face of his own, and Sidney laughs that honking, abrasive laugh of his. It's almost endearing. Even Sidney's brand of joy is strange. 

Zhenya tries on ten pairs of jeans and finds two that fit him well enough. Sidney tuts at them when Zhenya shows him, frowning down at the gape of the waistbands, but Zhenya waves him off. They're long enough for his legs, roomy enough for his ass, and he has belts to hold them up. It's the material that's important. 

"I could have Gina call Greg in and get them tailored for you," Sidney says when Zhenya's back in his own clothes. The discarded jeans have disappeared, and Zhenya would bet his entire allowance that they're all folded up and put back into the exact right spots. 

"No. Is fine." Zhenya shakes his head when Sidney opens his mouth again, and makes his way to the counter. Gina smiles at him and rings him up, chattering at him too fast for Zhenya to make out the words. She tells him the price and Zhenya turns so Sidney can't see him fumble with the unfamiliar currency. He hands over too much, but Gina doesn't say anything when she gives him back the bills. 

The sun is still high in the sky when they leave the shop. Zhenya doesn't have to make an appearance at dinner, but his stomach is rumbling. He hopes Alex is smart enough to have them all wash their mouths out and change their clothes before they present themselves to Bobrov, but he doesn't hold his breath on it. Distance, he thinks, is probably the best thing to give himself. Sidney is still standing next to him, his hands in his pockets, and Zhenya considers his options. 

"Where is good food?" He asks. He knows he's not getting borscht anywhere in Canada, but meat and bread is mostly the same everywhere, no matter the package. 

"Do you like pizza?" Sidney asks. 

"What is pizza?" 

Sidney's eyes go wide. Zhenya doesn't think he's ever seen someone with eyes quite the same color. They're not brown or grey or green, but somewhere in between all three. If he were a woman, Zhenya would say they're beautiful. Sidney nods once to himself and determinedly marches off without looking back. He's so _strange_. Zhenya follows after him anyway. 

They walk for a while, until they're in front of a squat, brick building with a wide, red roof that looks like a little hat. Zhenya can already smell whatever food is inside leaking through the windows and his stomach grumbles in anticipation. This building is much busier, but Sidney cuts through the too-close tables with families seated around them until he gets to the back of the restaurant. He squeezes his giant ass into one side of the booth and Zhenya settles in across from him. His knees bump both the underside of the table and against Sidney's, but his legs are too long to sit comfortably. He ends up sitting at an angle, one ankle in danger of slapping against the metal pole holding the table up, the other close enough to Sidney's that he can feel the warmth of him. 

"Do you mind if I order?" Sidney asks when a waitress comes to the table. Zhenya waves his hand. He's too busy looking around at what he assumes is pizza on the table next to him. It looks messy, but it smells good. When the waitress leaves, Zhenya realizes that he's going to have to speak, at least a little, or it'll be an even more awkward, uncomfortable meal. He's never been one for thinking before doing.

"How long you play?" He asks. It's a bland, boring question, but Sidney perks up. 

"I started ice skating when I was four," he says. "Every kid in the neighborhood played shinny whenever it was cold enough to ice someone's yard. I started playing hockey when I was nine."

"We play bandy," Zhenya says. It's been over a decade since he's seen the thrown together rink in the back of Maxims' building. He hasn't played bandy in almost as long. He misses it sometimes, the simple silly freedom of the game. "You tell me how is play shinny, I tell you bandy."

Sidney is animated as he explains, using bits of torn napkin to make diagrams. It's endearing and strange, which are the only words Zhenya seems to be able to think of when Sidney's around. When he's finished, Zhenya gathers up all the napkin pieces and makes his own diagrams. It's easier to explain this way, and when he exhausts the vocabulary he has, Sidney gives him new words to better explain. He could be making fun, filling Zhenya up with things to make him sound stupid, but Zhenya doesn't think that's what Sidney's done. He doesn't seem like the kind to be that meaninglessly cruel. 

Their pizza arrives as Sidney's telling a story about a kid in his old neighborhood that used to follow him around like a duckling. The waitress frowns at their little pile of scrapped napkins as she sets the hot pizza onto a tray in the middle of the table but doesn't say anything. The food smells good, at any rate, and Zhenya's hungry enough that he's willing to try anything. Sidney puts a piece onto a plate for him and passes it over, watching carefully as Zhenya cuts off the tip and blows on it. 

"What?"

"Nothing," Sidney says. He lifts his own piece up with his hands and takes a bite that has to burn his tongue. The grease leaves his lips shiny, and a smear of sauce lingers at the edge of his mouth. He gestures at Zhenya. 

It's- good. It's really good. After his first tentative bite, Zhenya copies Sidney and is reaching for a second piece before Sidney's even close to finishing his first. Sidney laughs and pushes the tray closer to him. 

"Good, eh?" He asks. 

"Yes, very good." Zhenya fills himself up, answering the questions Sidney asks him between giant bites. The next time they're in Moscow, he's going to see if there's a place that has something even close to _pizza_. If anywhere at home has it, it'll be Moscow. 

They're still talking when the waitress comes back to clear their empty plates. Zhenya can feel the headache coming up on him and he's tired in a way that no physical activity can replicate, but he likes Sidney's stories and Sidney laughs at all of Zhenya's badly told jokes like he's funny. It's novel talking to someone he hasn't known since he was a child. There's actually new things to discover. 

The sun has mostly gone down when the waitress unsubtly kicks them out. Toronto really is pretty, Zhenya thinks as he looks at the skyscrapers haloed by pink and purple dusk light. He can feel Sidney watching him, looking for the signs of approval of his occasional home. Zhenya wonders if Sidney will be able to see the beauty of Russia when they arrive, or if he'll have to show him. It's a stray thought and Zhenya shakes it off as Sidney leads them back to the hotel. 

"Thank you for show me stores," Zhenya says when the hotel is just a few blocks away, visible over the tops of the smaller houses around it. He stops and sits back on his heels, his shopping bag thudding against his thigh. 

"Any time," Sidney says. He probably really means it, too. He glances at the hotel and sighs. "Good luck tomorrow."

"I not need. Maybe you do," Zhenya says, and Sidney laughs as he leaves Zhenya standing, once again, alone on a strange street corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna ~burn myself. Also I'm probably going to clean up some wips and post them with [content] place holders and all, starting.with that one where Sid is a rookie and Geno is 4 years older than him. It was supposed to he 30kish, with lots of plot buildup, but I just wanna write Geno taking bb Sid's virginity in a pool 🤷
> 
> This here is definitely my swan song, but I have so many unfinished works I plan on cleaning up.


	8. Chapter 8

There's a ceremony before the game. Zhenya listens with half an ear, more interested in the crowd cheering their way through it. Next to him, Artemi is murmuring through a few prayers, his fingers fiddling with the iron Saint pendant on his necklace. According to Alex, Toronto girls were much easier to convince to take a shot on a nice Russian boy than Montreal girls. Zhenya is glad he'd left when he did. 

The team is called across the ice to receive gifts. Sidney smiles as he hands Zhenya a pair of silver cufflinks and a brightly colored plaque with what, according to Duper, is the Toronto city's logo. Zhenya can't help smiling back. 

Then, there is finally, finally hockey. It's a grueling, frustrating first period. Bobrov keeps switching their lines, calling players back before puck drop. Zhenya doesn't know who he'll be playing with, so he can't plan with them. Bobrov barks a play to Zhenya every time he goes out, and Zhenya somehow has to get that information to everyone else. 

It's a stupid plan and it shows. They're able to get the puck, but they can barely hold onto it long enough to shoot. Zhenya keeps throwing the puck to Alex's corner, expecting him to be there, and ending up with Kuzy running after it instead. Zhenya grits his teeth every time he's on the bench, his hands wringing around his stick. They're a good team, and they used to have a good system. 

They can't get a single goal through the first period, but Bryz makes sure that Canada can't either. Sidney fucks it all up by scoring barely seven minutes into the second, a messy goal from his belly that sneaks just past Bryz's pads. Anger boils in Zhenya's blood as he's sent out with Artem and bounced to the right wing. He can't _play_ like this.

They can't pull it together, but they manage to save most of the rest of the second period. Bobrov finally, finally, stops calling players back once they've already stepped out onto the ice, but he's still messing with their lines. The few shots Zhenya gets to the goal, Fleury blocks easily, shouting after him in French. 

Nothing happens at all through almost the entire period. Canada is as frustrated as they are, and it shows with every messy hit and elbow thrown when the referee is looking the other way. Ten seconds before the period ends, Marchand jabs Zhenya in the side and knocks him into the referee as they race for the puck. The referee blows his whistle, too loud right next to Zhenya's ear. 

The translator comes out. Zhenya stares down Marchand's rat face as Bobrov starts yelling louder and louder. Alex skates over, his face grim. 

"Misconduct," he spits. "Ten minutes for assaulting the ref."

"Ten fucking minutes?" Zhenya shouts, drawing his shoulders back, ready to become a proper Canadian and rip the referee's head off. He'd been _shoved_. Bobrov loses the fight and Zhenya storms his way to the locker room. 

Bobrov shouts at them until he's red in the face. Gonch puts his hand on Zhenya's shoulder and squeezes hard, his fingers digging in every time Zhenya tenses up. They have to play a man down for half of an entire period, and it's on him even though he didn't _do_ anything. 

He goes to the box when the period starts, anger simmering under his skin. Letang scores a little over a minute into the period. It makes him want to rip the bench up board by board with his bare hands. Instead, he gnaws on the neck of jersey to keep his mouth shut, aware of Gonch and the referees watching him carefully. 

Artemi manages to get a goal halfway through the penalty, but Canada scores more before Zhenya's released back onto the ice. Zhenya's body is cold and his anger blinds him as he tries to do something, _anything_ to swing the game back into his favor. 

They lose, four to a measly, pathetic one. 

Zhenya tries to ignore the noise of the crowd as they cheer in their seats. It's only the second game. They've already proven that they can win and win big. It still stings. Artemi bumps him with his shoulder and Zhenya shakes himself out of it. He's the captain, and a big part of this was his fault. He has to have the strongest face. 

"Malkin," someone shouts, and Zhenya looks up. Sidney is skating slowly towards him, his team lined up like ducks behind him. A messy, unidentifiable feeling cuts through the pain of the loss. He doesn't understand Sidney at all. 

"Line up," Zhenya shouts. Bryz had already started to sulk off toward the exit, but when Zhenya waves his stick at him, he skates back, head still down. Zhenya will have to go see him later, whenever Bobrov's finished chewing them out. It's coming. They all know it is. 

"Good game," Sidney says when he takes Zhenya's hand. It doesn't sound condescending at all. 

"You too." Zhenya almost even means it. 

He makes his way down the line, maybe faster than he would have if they had won. Most of the Canadians give him the route response. Marchand and Burns barely touch his hand at all before moving on, but they're at least pretending to play the part. It's something. At the end, Fleury closes both hands around Zhenya's and gives him a big, toothy smile. 

"I am watching you, my friend," he says. He has an accent almost as thick as Zhenya's, but he speaks in the same slow way Sidney does. Zhenya can't tell if it's supposed to be a threat or a compliment, and Fleury lets him go before he can figure it out. 

Bobrov is waiting for them at the exit door, his arms crossed and his eyes dark behind his glasses. Behind him, Gonch shakes his head once and puts a hand to his mouth in a clear signal to keep quiet. There is no use arguing whatever's going to happen. 

\---

They arrive in Winnipeg at three in the morning, and immediately are brought to the rink instead of the hotel. Gonch grumbles as he unloads all of their gear bags onto a rack, his eyes swollen and red. Zhenya reaches out to help him, but Bobrov's fingers sink like claws into his shoulder and turn him toward the propped open door of the building. 

"Go," he says, and Zhenya goes. 

Artemi, who hasn't gotten used to sleeping anywhere but in a bed, nods off three times while he's pulling on his gear. Zhenya elbows him awake each time, knocking him solidly to the ground the third time. He's not exactly wide awake himself, but he's supposed to set a good example even in trying times, and he'll be damned if Bobrov takes that out on them, too. 

They skate and Bobrov yells, his voice echoing around the empty seats and back at them for a repeat. He runs them hard for a warmup, races that end with the losers doing pushups with their bare hands flat against the ice, and then they take shot after shot after shot on Bryz. Zhenya's arms ache, his wrists cramping, but he takes his turn each time and does his pushups when he misses. An hour in, he can't feel his palms anymore. At least the pain is gone. 

"Malkin," Bobrov shouts as Bryz is finally relieved to go stretch it out. Zhenya's stomach sinks as he skates forward. "Into the net." Zhenya hands his stick to Gonch, who gives him Bryz's glove. He hunches down in front of the net, his heart beating fast and his jersey sticking to him with sweat. Alex looks furious enough for the both of them as he takes his place in line again. "You are the captain, am I correct?"

"Yes, coach," Zhenya says. It still burns every time he has to call Bobrov that. Bobrov is a dictator choking them all dry. Coach was their leader. Coach wouldn't be doing this. 

"Then show your team what happens when they've failed." Bobrov blows his whistle and Orly takes the first shot. Zhenya manages to knock it away from himself, and then Orly's on the ice doing his pushups. There is no way to win this game.

Alex pulls his shot, but it still gets Zhenya in the thigh, a burst of pain that makes Zhenya's knee feel like it's going to buckle. Artemi shoots through his legs, and Zhenya drops to his knees to attempt to block it. It hurts, too, throbbing up through his thighs. He hadn't even _done_ anything. 

Bobrov releases them an hour later to sleep. Zhenya falls into his bed still dressed in his sweat soaked clothes. They have another practice scheduled for the day. Zhenya doesn't know if he's going to be able to get through it. 

\---

Zhenya fidgets in front of Duper's door. His entire body aches, his legs already stiff and his wrists aching. There's a mark that's already gone black on his upper thigh that throbs in time with his heart. He wishes there were a sauna and, for the first time of the trip, misses home. He shouldn't be doing this. He doesn't know _why_ he's doing this. He just can't stay in the same room with anyone on the team right now, and he doesn't want to be alone. 

Well, he thinks as he knocks on the door, maybe he does have a reason after all. 

"Evgeni!" Duper gives Zhenya one of his too big smiles. "What do you need?"

"Where is room of Crosby?" Zhenya asks. Duper's bushy eyebrows raise, but he keeps smiling. It's incredibly uncomfortable. "I want say thank you. For shake." Duper laughs, just a small little huff, and Zhenya crosses his arms over his chest. "You say ask."

"I did," Duper agrees. "He's in room 407. Tell him I said hi." He pats Zhenya's arm and shuts the door before Zhenya can say anything else. It's probably for the best. 

Zhenya takes the elevator a floor up. He checks the hall carefully before he steps out. There doesn't seem to be anyone there, so he makes his way quickly to 407, his head down and his shoulders hunched up to his ears. He doesn't have time to hesitate, so he forces himself to take a deep breath and knock on the door. 

Sidney answers, shirtless and barefoot, mouth already open to say something. He stops suddenly and then smiles, stepping aside to let Zhenya in. Now that he's here, Zhenya feels silly, like a child latching onto scraps of absent minded affection. Sidney doesn't seem to mind, leaned back against the closed door, eyes trained on Zhenya's. 

"Thank you for shake," Zhenya says. There's no reason to be coy. 

"Respect, right?" Sidney's shoulders are so wide, and his chest is smooth and hairless. The legs of his short shorts look like they might snap a seam around Sidney's giant thighs. Zhenya scratches at his own skinny calf with the toe of his sneaker. "That was a stupid penalty."

"I'm not do-" Zhenya waves his hand. _I didn't do it because I meant to. One of your shitty players made me._

"On purpose," Sidney says gently. "I know you didn't. Lev's an asshole. Usually he's only mean to me."

"Bad ref," Zhenya agrees. He sucks up his pride and makes himself look at Sidney full on. "Here is good food also?" Sidney laughs, his head tipping back against the door. His adams apple bounces and his too-big nose scrunches up. Zhenya doesn't know how he can just… show so much of himself to a stranger. 

"Yeah," he says. "Let me put a shirt on and we'll get something. I know a few places." 

Sidney squeezes into a tight, cropped white t-shirt and grabs his flat cap from the dresser. A wide, pale band of his flat belly stands stark out from under the hem and Zhenya looks away from it quickly. There's a book laying on its front on the messy, undone bed. Zhenya can't make out the title, but there's an illustration of a giant ship on the front. It doesn't look like the bodice-rippers Kuzy likes to pretend he doesn't read, or even the novels Zhenya makes time for when he can. It looks like a book from a school- more informative than fun. 

"Are you really hungry?" Sidney asks. On cue, Zhenya's stomach grumbles. Once again, the food they'd been given at lunch hadn't been nearly enough to fill their bellies, and Bobrov had made sure they'd worked it off. 

"Yes. Hungry." Zhenya pats his stomach and crinkles his nose. Sidney laughs again and leads the way out of his room. Zhenya follows a few steps behind him, looking over his shoulder until they're outside. He doesn't think he can claim being lost anymore. 

They walk quietly away from the hotel, Sidney confidently striding towards whatever food he thinks is best. Winnipeg isn't as flashy as Montreal or Toronto, more nature and fewer people. Zhenya thinks he likes it better this way. He still keeps a careful eye out for any faces he recognizes, but as soon as they're tucked into the high-backed booth of a diner with a woman's name written in big letters over every door, the weight drops off of him. 

"What can I get you boys?" Their waitress leans on the table, her pad and paper in hand, her blonde hair peeking out from under her square hat. It's the same pastel blue as her uniform dress and makes her green eyes look almost supernatural. She isn't subtle about looking Sidney over. 

Either Sidney doesn't notice, or doesn't care. He doesn't even look at the menu, just says, "Two orders of poutine and two root beers, please." 

The waitress presses her pale pink lips together, but writes down their order and leaves them alone. She's pretty in that North American way. If Alex were here, he'd probably be trying to set Zhenya up to go home with her. Zhenya's glad Alex isn't here. 

"What is poutine?" Zhenya asks. He still feels stilted around Sidney, uncomfortable and too comfortable all at once. Sidney grins and fiddles with the cloth napkin folded in front of him. 

"It's good," he says, which doesn't answer Zhenya's question at all. "You'll see. Oh! I wanted to ask you about Panarin's goal." Then they're off. Hockey is an easy topic. Zhenya can talk about it in his sleep, and Sidney sees things that Zhenya doesn't even think about. 

"My sister will be at the next game," Sidney says after he's spent five enthusiastic minutes talking about Alex's slapshot. Zhenya thinks it's overrated, but he would never say so out loud. At least not to anyone other than Alex. "I'm excited to see her. It feels like it's been forever."

"How old?" Zhenya asks. Sidney beams, the same face Gonch wears whenever he's talking about his daughters. 

"She turned thirteen this year," he says. His eyes crinkle at the corners, already distant, like he can see her. "What a monster. She won't hug me anymore because I'm _bogue_. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"One brother," Zhenya says. "He is one year older." Denis had never seemed too pleased to have Zhenya toddling along after him, and after Zhenya, small for his age and still bad at speaking in his own mother tongue, had been pulled into the hockey school, they'd lost touch. His mother tells him about Denis sometimes in her letters, but he's been a stranger longer than he's been a brother. 

"Does he play, too?" Sidney asks. 

The waitress interrupts them with two large plates of cut potatoes covered in a dark brown gravy, the steam rolling off of them hot enough to make Zhenya's eyes water. It smells amazing. Zhenya's stomach rumbles. He almost feels bad for the rest of his team for missing out. Almost. The waitress gives Sidney a disapproving look over her shoulder as she walks away, pointedly flipping her hair over her shoulder. Sidney doesn't even look at her, still watching Zhenya over his plate. Whatever girl he has back home must be _stunning_.

"He is play when we kids, but hockey school only take me," Zhenya says. 

He can still remember the way Denis' eyes had gone soft and wet before going cold. Zhenya was too young to know then that he'd doomed him to work in the mines forever with his father. He'd just remembered feeling so much- joy and terror and excitement, and then pain as Denis left him. 

"When I'm seven years old, Coach come and look at all kids in my city. We skate for him, and he's pick best ones to teach. I'm go. I don't see him for long time." 

Sidney tucks his fork into the poutine and puckers his mouth to blow on the potatoes. His lips are shiny from the root beer, smooth like a woman's. Zhenya's lips are always rough, cracked because he can't keep his tongue in his mouth. He licks them now and thinks of the last time he's gotten the chance to kiss someone. It's been too long. 

Zhenya pokes at his own food, spearing a potato and whate looks like a drop of melted cheese. He doesn't bother blowing on it, and only regrets it a little when he shoves the fork into his mouth. It's _amazing_. 

"This so good."

"Canada's national dish," Sidney says, smug for the first time since Zhenya's met him. "You didn't go home at all during the summer?"

"We play in summer, yes," Zhenya says. The first year, he thought he'd die in the heat, sweating outside while Coach had them run back and forth over the grounds. "Coach is take us near Moscow to new house. He teach us everything. Like papa." Sidney makes a face that Zhenya can't read. 

"Bobrov doesn't seem very fatherly."

"Not Bobrov," Zhenya spits. "Bobrov is-" An imposter, a fraud, an unfeeling machine. "Bobrov come only for now. Coach is good man. He's teach us everything. Numbers and hockey and how to wash clothes and make soup." Technically, Nina had taught them to make the soup, but Coach had gamely tried each bowl and given them positive feedback. 

"Your coach taught you how to cook?" Sidney pauses, his fork halfway to his mouth. 

"Who else is teach?" The food is too hot to shovel down like Zhenya wants to, but he takes another bite and has to stop himself from making a ridiculous noise. It's everything his aching, empty stomach wants. "I'm not see Mama and Papa for almost all year. Then, mama just want make me fat and happy. No time for teach." 

Denis had always been absent during those few rare, precious days Zhenya was allowed to take the train back to Magnitogorsk. Zhenya had missed him the first few years. When he turned twelve, he'd stopped expecting to see Denis at all. Instead, he would make the best of Mama's spoiling and Papa's proud, watery toasts over dinner. The last time he saw Denis was over six years ago. He tries not to think about it. 

"You lived with him?"

"Yes," Zhenya says slowly then shakes his head. "No. We have apartment for team, but is by rink." Sidney's face is unreadable and Zhenya stabs at another potato to hide his discomfort. "Why? Where you live?"

"In my house." Sidney pauses, then grins sheepishly. There's a smear of gravy at the corner of his lip. "Well, Mario's house. He's the big guy in Pittsburgh."

Sidney talks at length about Mario's young kids, gesturing broadly with his hands. Sometimes, in his excitement, he talks too quickly for Zhenya to understand, but Zhenya doesn't need to hear his words to know what he means. Zhenya works his way through his poutine, nodding and making noises for Sidney to keep going. He's going to be fat when he goes back home, but he doesn't care. His mother will be happy at least. 

"You have girl?" Zhenya asks when Sidney finally runs out of steam. He sounds like Alex. Sidney's smile falters before he shakes his head. Suddenly, Zhenya feels like he's overstepped. 

"No time," Sidney says. Zhenya wonders if he sounded as shifty when he says the same thing. "You?"

"No," Zhenya replies. He pokes at the last potato that he can't quite justify putting into his overstuffed stomach. "Too busy also."

The waitress saves them from the moment by ducking between them to refill their waters. Now that he's well fed, Zhenya can feel the exhaustion creeping up on him. His thigh aches and he rubs at it absently but stops as soon as he catches Sidney watching him. He yawns, big and overexaggerated, and hopes Sidney gets the hint. 

The walk back to the hotel is quiet, but it's a comfortable silence. The air has gone from cool to chilly, but Sidney doesn't look like it's bothering him at all. Zhenya wonders what he'd look like in one of those crop-tops and if Alex and Gonch would ever let him live down wearing one. He wonders if he'd look as effortlessly attractive as Sidney does, or if he'd just look like an oversized giant in children's clothes. When they reach the turn for the hotel, Sidney stops walking. 

"Good luck tomorrow," he says, holding his hand out. Zhenya takes it and is surprised that Sidney doesn't feel as warm as he looks. 

"Yes, good luck." Zhenya drops Sidney's hand and shuffles back into the hotel alone. He falls into his bed, both heavier and lighter than he'd been when he'd snuck away, and sleeps like the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Sid in a crop top and jean shorts.](https://zhenya71.tumblr.com/post/184816017891/just-so-yall-know-i-just-wrote-a-scene-in-the)
> 
> So. Need y'all you go look at this glory.


	9. Chapter 9

Bobrov's fucked with the lines. Bobrov's fucked with the lines, and Zhenya wants to blame that for Canada scoring barely two minutes into the game, but it was an honest goal off Bryz's fumble. Richards tosses his hair and gives the crowd a big smile, and Zhenya wants to smash his teeth in. Instead, he jumps over the boards and takes the faceoff. 

He loses the puck to Carter. Zhenya chases him down, just slightly too far away, but it's enough to pressure Carter into a sloppy pass that Kuch snatches up. He passes blind behind himself to Kuzy and then immediately gets toppled by Marchand. Fleury is so far out of the net that when Kuzy takes a shot all the way from the blue line, he doesn't have time to dive in front of it. It sinks home and Zhenya rushes across the ice to crush Kuzy to his chest. 

One down. At least one more to go. 

It's a game of back and forth. They can't keep the puck in Canada's zone, but Canada can't keep it in theirs either. Zhenya grits his teeth every time he's on the ice, reluctantly glad for all the sprints Bobrov had put them through. He can't connect with Kuch. He keeps expecting him to be where Artemi usually goes and every time he undershoots a pass, it turns up the angry simmer low in his gut.

The Canadians start taking cheap shots. Zhenya sees them on the bench- Burns elbowing Artemi in the face in the corner, away from the puck. Thornton smacking Kuzy on the back of the head with his stick when the refs turn away. Zhenya nearly loses his mind when someone knees him in the back of the thigh against the boards, dead legging him. Marchand is sloppy, though, and when he cracks his stick down over Alex's knuckles, the useless ref finally blows the whistle. 

The power play is rough. Zhenya takes the puck in the faceoff and runs toward the net. Burns crushes him into the boards hard enough to rock him, and the puck flies away toward the blue line. The Canadians check hard, throwing themselves recklessly into any body that even comes close to the puck and then again just in case. Zhenya tries to shake it off as he gets to the bench, but the rest of the team is fuming. Alex, with his hand wrapped up tight, jabs the butt of his stick into Sidney's side as he passes by and smiles when Sidney gives him a dirty look.

"Fuck the Canadians," he says viciosuly and jumps onto the ice. 

Just before the end of the period, Richards sends Artemi head over heels and the puck lands, like drawn by a string, right on Carter's stick. Zhenya watches from the bench as his team scrambles to catch it again, but Carter scores, and they're down again. 

Sidney scores first in the second period, like he isn't even trying, head up and eyes clear and smile bright like he's out on someone's back pond instead of playing for glory. Zhenya wants to hate him when Sidney flashes that smile at him, but it doesn't look like a taunt. It looks like the same smile he wore when he was talking about his little sister. Joy. Zhenya turns away and listens to Bobrov's barked calls. 

For five minutes, they chase Canada. For five minutes, Marchand latches onto Artemi every time they're on the ice together, pushing and laughing and calling him shouted names. Zhenya grits his teeth and reigns Orly in every time he looks like he's going to do something stupid. He scores his own goal, an easy enough breakaway that feels like less of a win than it should, but Letang doesn't even let him have that glory, scoring one at the other side of the ice barely a minute later. 

Alex and Artemi both score in the dying minutes of the period, but that's all. Those are the last goals of the game, tied four to four. 

They're tied in the series. It's still early. They can still turn it around. 

\---

A draw isn't a win, but it isn't a loss. Bobrov doesn't send them to bed without dinner, but he uses Gonch as a mouthpiece to express his disappointment. Gonch looks as pained as the rest of them feel as he talks about expectations and the Motherland and their duties. Zhenya tunes him out to the best of his ability, leg jittering enough to shake the bench. Artem gives him an unimpressed look, but Zhenya can't help the energy sticking to his insides. 

When they're released, he bolts back to his room before Alex can rope him into doing anything. He thinks he might watch some TV and call it homework and then jerk off before going to sleep. Their flight doesn't leave until the afternoon- Zhenya can already feel a sympathy hangover brewing for at least Artemi- and he should rest. His leg had bothered him all game, the bruise there already in the black and purple ugly stage. Maybe he can talk Duper into finding him ice. As he's figuring out his plan, someone knocks on his door.

"I'm not going out," Zhenya says as he opens it. It's like a loop in time to find Sidney standing there, hands jammed into the pockets of his bellbottoms. He looks- nice. Dressier than Zhenya's seen him before. Zhenya can't tell if his shirt- billowy and unbuttoned at the chest- is real silk or just itchy polyester. He has to stop himself from reaching out to touch it. Just to check. "Hi. In."

"Hey," Sidney says as he steps inside. The hall is clear when Zhenya checks it, but he can hear Alex and Kuzy shouting at each other through the walls. Sidney fidgets with his cuffs, his nose wrinkling. It's cute, like a kitten. "A few of us are going out tonight. I thought you might want to come."

"Me. Your team." Zhenya can't think of words in any language to express how bad an idea that is. His dinners with Sidney are bad enough. He doesn't think he can find an excuse for joining more of the wrong reds, and he sure as hell doesn't want to. 

"Just two of my team," Sidney corrects. "Flower- I mean, Fleury and Letang." He gives up on his cuffs, but it's left his shirt collar crooked. The gold necklace around his throat looks delicate, catching even under the dim light of the lamp on the dresser. He shrugs and the necklace shifts, rippling like a wave. "I think they'd really like you."

"Why you want?" Zhenya asks. He thinks back to seeing the Canadians the first time, the unsettling thought of being alone with more than one of them. Sidney has been fine- Sidney has been more than fine, if Zhenya's being honest- but he doesn't trust the rest of them at all. Sidney shrugs again. 

"I like hanging out with you," he says simply. "Anyway, I've already heard all their stories a thousand times, and eventually they get tired of talking about hockey."

"Bad player," Zhenya says. His resolve is crumbling, his quiet night in already fading away the longer he looks at Sidney's hopeful, crooked smile. He tenses when another knock comes and Sidney startles. "Bathroom. Go." Zhenya waits until Sidney is sufficiently hidden away before cracking the door open. 

"Zhenya," Alex croons. Kuzy, Artemi and Bryz are crowded behind him, all of them in their best going out clothes. Artemi's hair has been fluffed up even more than usual, which Zhenya thinks makes him look like a newborn chick. Maybe that's what he was going for. "Come out with us."

"No," Zhenya says. He tries to close the door, but Alex jams his foot in before he can. "Go away. I'm busy."

"Busy doing what?" Alex asks. He tries to peek in and Zhenya's heart pounds in his chest. He hasn't breathed a word about Sidney since the beginning. He isn't going to start now, of all times. 

"What do you think?" He asks, throwing himself onto the pyre to avoid the stake. Kuzy hoots and Alex shakes his head. 

"We can get someone else to do that for you, you know," he says. 

"Don't get arrested. Good night." Zhenya plants a hand on Alex's face, shoves him away, and slams the door closed. Alex and Kuzy heckle him through it for a few more moments, but then their voices trail off as they go to whatever destination they've got in mind. Sidney pokes his head out of the bathroom and raises his eyebrows. "Is bad idea, Sidney."

"You don't have to come if you don't want to," Sidney says. "They'll be nice. I promise." The way he says it, Zhenya assumes they have to be nice or pay for it. Zhenya didn't think Sidney had it in him to make anyone sorry for anything, but then again he's only known Sidney for a handful of hours. 

"Just for little time," Zhenya reluctantly says, already regretting it. Sidney smiles, wide and crooked, and Zhenya goes to his bag to find something suitable. 

The shirt he finally picks isn't flashy as Sidney's, but it has big bell sleeves a deep collar that shows off what little chest hair he can grow. He turns his back, shoves off his track pants, and pulls on his new pair of jeans. They gape a little at the waist, but he doesn't regret not getting them tailored. Room to grow, as his mother used to say. He grabs his wallet and coat and tells himself it's not fucking stupid to hang out with not just one but _three_ Canadians.

"Where we go?" Zhenya asks. Sidney gives him an intersection and good enough directions to get there, and Zhenya sends him on his way. He waits a few minutes, feeling every last inch like a naughty teenager, before steeling himself and following after. 

Sidney is easy to spot, even on the crowded street. Letang and Fleury flank him like guards in pastel plaid. The high waist of Fleury's pants make him look even taller and ganglier, but there's something welcoming about his face. There's nothing at all welcoming about Letang, save maybe the same idle urge to touch his feathered hair now that it isn't soaked in sweat.

"Evgeni, hey!" Sidney waves him over, which turns into elbowing Fleury in the stomach for something Zhenya can't quite hear. "Evgeni, this is Flower and this is Kris. Guys, this is Evgeni."

"We have read the game pamphlets, Sid," Kris says, but holds a hand for Zhenya to shake. 

"So you're Sid's pet Soviet," Flower says. They both have thick French accents. Zhenya wonders if they had as much trouble learning English, or if it had just been as easy as a hop into another pond. 

"You are Flower? Not pretty enough." Zhenya doesn't need to play nice and doesn't really plan on it, but Sidney and Flower both laugh. Kris just looks pained. He, Zhenya figures, is the one to be careful around. 

"I see why he likes you," Flower says and claps Zhenya on the shoulder. "But my ass is frozen and I'm thirsty."

Sidney chatters the rest of the way to the bar, some fancy place with a tall, bald man guarding the door. He gives Zhenya a suspicious look, but takes Kris' word that he's a guest of theirs. Inside, the music is loud, the large floor in the center jammed with brightly colored dancers. The lights from the ball hanging above it glitter across the entire interior, like they've entered a fairy land instead of a place that smells a little too much like metal and sweat. 

"What do you usually drink?" Sidney asks as they follow Kris through the mess to a table near the far end of the bar. He has to lean in closer and Zhenya shivers at the unexpected gust of Sidney's breath against his ear. 

"Vodka," Zhenya says, because he can't think of the word for beer and a good shot or two really is in order. The game already feels like it happened days ago instead of hours. Maybe he is in a fairy land, where time moves differently and Sidney Crosby's nasal, honking laugh is more charming than grating. "You?"

"Whatever Flower is buying," Sidney says, squeezing into the far back corner. He kicks the chair next to him out and Zhenya settles into it as best as he can. Sidney is too wide, and he's too long, and Zhenya can feel the way Kris is cataloging all the places they're overlapping. 

"Sid has told us all about you," Kris drawls, resting his elbows on the table and leaning in. Sidney sighs, but Zhenya sits up straighter. Fine. He won't be intimidated by some _Canadian_. 

"He's say nothing for you." He can feel Sidney laughing more than he can hear him. Kris' face stays stony for another moment before he cracks a smile. It makes him look like a little kid instead of the Canadian monster of Bobrov's nightmares. 

Flower brings them weak Canadian beers and shots of vodka, wiggling his skinny body easily around the crowd. He's laughing as he passes them out, and Zhenya tries his best to be subtle about switching his with Kris'. He, bizarrely, trusts Sidney. He doesn't know about these two yet. Kris gives him an unimpressed look and downs most of the beer in one go. 

"How are you liking Canada?" Flower asks as he shoves Kris over and takes his seat. 

"Is nice," Zhenya says carefully. It feels like a loaded question. "Good food. Sidney showed me poutine." Flower laughs.

"Sid will take any excuse to eat poutine," he says. "It's why his ass is so big." The table jostles as Sidney kicks at him, his knee thudding into Zhenya's thigh. At least he isn't the only one who's noticed the shape of Sidney's ass through his disgustingly tight pants. It makes some of the guilt feel reasonable. 

Flower and Kris spend the next hour telling embarrassing stories about Sidney through the years, watching him get more and more flustered. Zhenya can't understand all of it- the music is too loud, and he doesn't know all the words- but he can see a younger version of Sidney fumbling his way through life easily, surrounded by people that can't help being drawn in by him. Every so often, Sidney looks over at him, flushed pink from drinks and embarrassment, and Zhenya is glad he came. 

"Your turn," Sidney says, after Kris gives him an absolute gem of a story about Sidney's first time in a bar, snuck in by his captain under someone's coat. Zheyna can only imagine how ridiculous it must have looked. "Tell us a story."

"When we're maybe nine, Alex decides we need get lamb from kitchen," Zhenya says. They'd both been skinny and forever hungry, the growing pains eating at them at night. Sasha, two years older than them and more familiar with the dorms and the surrounding streets, had convinced them it would be a good idea. "We sneak from room, very quiet, and go to Coach's apartment. Is maybe ten minutes on belly in dirt, both of us-" he waves his hand in front of him, head to waist. "Alex, he's bigger, so when we get to window, he says I'm climb up on him, get inside first."

Zhenya had spent too long climbing all over Alex's back, getting more mud on him and bruising him all to hell. Tatyana hadn't been born yet, no threat of a tiny wailing alarm to warn of their presence, but Zhenya had still felt like they were robbing a bank as he'd slipped through the window, his stomach scraping against the wood of the frame. 

"We get inside, but need be very quiet." Zhenya could still remember the stillness in the air, the thrill of finally doing something he wasn't supposed to. "Alex, he's sneak into kitchen. I'm-" Zhenya fumbles for the right word. He's been getting better, but some words don't come by an easy translation. 

"Lookout," Sidney says. His eyes, sharp even after a few shots and half a beer, are trained on Zhenya's face, like the silly story he's telling is more than boyhood madness. "You kept watch while he went into the kitchen."

"Yes. I'm lookout." He doesn't say it the same way Sidney had, his tongue fumbling the constants, but none of them give him a sideways look for messing it up. "Alex walk so quiet, but Coach never sleep. He's come out with big-" There is no way to pantomime a firepoker. "Is stick. Metal. He's hold in hand, without clothes, and I jump out window into snow."

"Wait," Kris says, his eyebrows high. "You saw your coach naked and with a weapon and just left?"

"I'm nine," Zhenya protests. He could still remember the look of bleak terror on Alex's face as he tried to hide himself against a bare wall. After that, he hadn't seen anything at all. "I run, whole way back to home. Don't see Alex for whole day, but day after we all get lamb and Alex get bread."

Sidney laughs, his shoulder bumping against Zhenya's. He's pink all over and goes without complaint when Flower drags him onto the dancefloor. Zhenya can't help sneaking looks over his two brand new shots- one vodka, one tequila. He isn't sure how he feels about tequila, but Kris shoots his easily and Zhenya has never been one to pass up a challenge. He downs the vodka right after, just to make sure they're both aware of the biggest dick at the table. Kris laughs and his eyes crinkle as he tosses his hair. 

"Sid is important to us," Kris says. He doesn't speak the same way Flower and Sidney do, slowed down for Zhenya's benefit. Zhenya reluctantly likes him for it. "If someone were to hurt him-"

'I'm not go to his room and take him outside," Zhenya says, even though that is a blatant lie. "I'm just sit, and he's follow me." Kris laughs again, cheeks pink in a way that says either the shots or the heat have caught up to him. Maybe both. "I'm just dumb Soviet." He can't help the hiss it comes out as. He's heard it all over the world, from people more important than Kris Letang. Kris raises his eyebrows again. 

"You're something," he says. His hair catches the disco lights, shimmery under their multi-colored strobes. Zhenya has had enough drinks to finally give in and touches a feathered end where it curls up against Kris' jaw. It's fluffy, not even a hint of the stiff gel Alex uses when he can get his hands on it. 

"How is do?" He asks. He doesn't want to talk about Sidney when he isn't here to- well, he wasn't quite defending himself, but still- and while Sidney seems to admire the Soviet system, Kris looks like he'd rather take all of them out at the knees and cheer over their fallen bodies. Kris doesn't get the bandy stories.

It takes a lot of hand movements and talking around words that neither of them know in their shared second language, but Kris tells him his hair routine. Zhenya's father started balding at thirty-five, and Zhenya has no doubts he'll follow in those footsteps, but he makes drunken little mental notes about eggs and shampoos and ribbons tied just the right way at night. 

He doesn't know if he's officially won the drinking contest when Flower and Sidney return to the table, but he's feeling floaty and he's stopped even trying to respond to Kris in English, which Kris doesn't seem to care about at all. Sidney looks between them, his eyebrows raised, before putting a hand on Zhenya's shoulder. It's warm. Bigger than Zhenya thought it would be too. He goes cross-eyed trying to stare down at it, and he thinks it's Flower that's laughing, but he can't be sure. 

"I think we should go back," Sidney says, leaned in to speak directly into Zhenya's ear. His voice is weird. Sidney is weird. Sidney is- Zhenya slumps against him, the same way he would against Alex when they've had too much, and raises his arms lazily. 

"You take," he says. 

"Maybe we should do shots before the next game," Flower says as he grabs one of Zhenya's wrists. His hands are cold. Not nearly as nice as Sidney's. Zhenya huffs a laugh. He can taste the tequila on his breath. He'll definitely need to find a bottle for Artemi before they leave. It's disgusting. 

"I drink best," Zhenya says as they drag him out of the booth. He's lazy and loose-limbed, time moving just a little too slow, but he can stand on his own feet and only sways a little as he does. Kris snorts and Zhenya sticks his tongue out like a child. 

"Sure," Sidney says. Up close, his eyes are brown and blue and green all at once, the colors bouncing off the disco ball not nearly as bright. "Let's go."

The walk back is nice. The air has finally, finally become autumn cool and it feels good against Zhenya's sweaty skin. He doesn't need to lean on Sidney to walk properly, but it's nice not to have to worry about stumbling, and Sidney laughs every time Zhenya puts too much weight on him, bracing his giant legs against the sidewalk and leaning in like they have a secret. 

When they get back to the hotel, Kris gives them a silent wave and heads off to the stairs. Zhenya thinks he's stupid. There are _elevators_ everywhere. What a waste of technology. Flower dumps Sidney and Zhenya into one of those wonderful, wonderful elevators and says something in French that Zhenya doesn't even pretend to understand. Sidney laughs and kicks him out before the door closes. Zhenya's stomach lurches as the elevator starts moving and he closes his eyes. He already knows he and Artemi are going to have to team up to smother Kuzy or die of headaches. 

"I'm glad you came out," Sidney says. It's so much quieter here, just the two of them and the mirrored walls. They're both red-faced, their clothes pulled a little messily. "It was good, right?"

"Yes," Zhenya says, slumping against the wall. "Good. I'm also glad." Sidney thumps him once on the shoulder, awkward but friendly, before the door pings open on Zhenya's floor. He wants, in the drunken part of himself, for Sidney to walk him to his door and deal with the finicky key and maybe talk some more, until Zhenya falls asleep, but the responsible part of him, however small, knows it's a bad idea. "See you in- next place."

"Yeah," Sidney says. He shoves a little at Zhenya's shoulder to get him moving, but his eyes are so bright and his crooked smile is- pretty. It's pretty. Zhenya stumbles his way to his room and fumbles with his key. It's later than he would have liked, but he almost thinks he's gotten away with something when he hears his name. 

"And what do we have here?" Alex asks, his own voice a little wobbly. He's down to his underpants, head sticking out from his door, the gap in his teeth on full display. "Did you sneak away without us? Did your hand not satisfy you?" 

"Fuck off, Alex," Zhenya mutters, uselessly jamming his key into the door again. He hates these stupid things. Alex lets him suffer for a few moments before coming out into the hall and fixing the problem without even trying. Zhenya hates him, too. 

"There were these two girls who were very interested in our accents," Alex says as he leads Zhenya into his room and towards the bed. He shoves once and Zhenya bounces on the bed, his stomach roiling. Tomorrow is going to be terrible. He can feel it already. Alex kneels to help Zhenya out of his shoes. "You should have come with us. Artemi is breaking hearts all across Canada."

"I don't want to break hearts," Zhenya mumbles. He can already feel the sleep coming up to catch him. Alex stands and covers him with the blanket from the couch, laughing quietly to himself. 

"I know, Zhenya," he says softly. "I'm waking you up at six, just so you know."

"I will kill you," Zhenya says, and then the world fades away as he finally passes out.


	10. Chapter 10

The plane is hell. Zhenya doesn't seem like the only one nursing a sore head, but Alex has honed in on him and keeps asking him increasingly loud questions directly into Zhenya's ear. If he keeps it up, he's going to show up in Vancouver with another broken nose and his ugly tie shoved down his throat. After the first hour, he gives it up and goes to bother Kuzy, who isn't looking too hot himself. Payback is sweet, Zhenya thinks. 

"Men," Bobrov says from the front of the plane, hands folded behind his back. "Your attention." Zhenya shoves down the urge to pretend he's asleep. Pointless acts of pettiness won't help him, even if he can already taste the sweetness of Bobrov's anger. "Tomorrow will be our last game in Canada. We are nearly halfway through, and there is no lead. I am disappointed, but I know you will all work to leave this country with that in our favor."

The plane is silent, except for the hum of the engine. What a pep talk, Zhenya thinks bitterly. Win, or face Bobrov's wrath. Be a good gear, or be replaced to better the machine. He wonders, not for the first time, if Bobrov even likes hockey. If he can see the beauty of outsmarting your competitor, the grace of the winding dance between teammates, the real, true victory of knowing you gave everything and it was worth it, or if, to him, hockey is just a thing that can be broken to his will. One more thing he's won. 

He misses Coach so much it aches. He misses Coach's wild hair and eyes, signs of him already making his new plans. He misses Coach's teary, impassioned speeches before and after every hard fought battle. He misses _Coach_ \- a crazy, stern man who would be boosting them with help instead of threatening to make their lives hell when they get back home. His mother used to say that a person could catch more flies with honey than vinegar. She always had been a wise woman. 

"We will have two practice times today," Bobrov continues and Zhenya can already feel the misery just waiting for him. "Before the game tomorrow, there will be a late lunch with the Canadian team and several important people. You will all be on your best behavior. You will all represent the Union and myself with politeness. And then you will win. Am I understood?"

"Yes, coach," Zhenya mutters along with everyone else. Bobrov sits back down and even Alex seems to deflate a little, stopping his grand quest to annoy everyone. Zhenya had hoped he wouldn't have to do the political song and dance here, hundreds of miles away from where he matters, but that seems too much of a dream to even think of requesting. 

Duper is the first one off the plane, distracting the photographers and journalists just waiting to hound them. Gonch gives Zhenya a look that Zhenya refuses to answer to and hauls his bags through the terminal and onto the bus. For the first time, it's properly cold outside, their breaths fogging the windows as the bus takes them past their hotel and straight to the arena. Zhenya thinks, for just one moment, that he would rather have a day off. It's a new and uncomfortable thought. 

They leave their suits in messily folded piles in the locker room and slog onto the ice. Zhenya's thigh is still mostly black and blue under his pants, the puck from Alex that feels like it happened years ago. Time has started to move strangely, too long and too short and impossible to gauge except for the places he needs to be. They've only been in Canada for a week. It feels like it's been a year. 

Practice is a blur of a headache and Bobrov blowing his whistle every time someone fumbles a pass or misses the net. Artemi and Kuzy look pale and drawn when they're finally released to get lunch, and Zhenya imagines he doesn't look much better. He can only hope that Kris is in as much pain as they are. It's his fault for the way Zhenya's feeling. He deserves to suffer, too. 

Zhenya shovels in as much bland hotel food as he can, barely giving himself time to taste it before they're shuttled off to a conference room for their English lessons. Gonch talks and Zhenya does try to listen, but he's distracted with the game and with the way Sidney had asked him over and over about their formations and the way if he closes his eyes he can still hear Sidney laughing. Maybe he really was a spy. He's a distraction that's going to get Zhenya in trouble sooner or later. 

"Why are we still even doing this?" Zhenya asks as they're released. "We're not going to need it anymore. And when am I going to talk to hockey media about stars? We have what we need." Gonch shakes his head. 

"You can learn new things just for fun," he says. Before Zhenya can tell him that English is garbage, and not what he would call any sort of fun, Gonch cuts him off with a wave of his hand. "English is one of the most spoken languages in the world and you are the face of Soviet hockey. You should be able to represent us." His eyes scan over Zhenya's face. He looks sad for some reason Zhenya can't fathom. "And I've always seen more than you think. Keep studying."

Zhenya does not keep studying. He drags his wet, stinking gear back on and shoots and skates and listens to Bobrov's shouts until his arms are shaking and his ears are ringing. When they're finally, finally released to their room, Zhenya feels like he's been awake for days, wobbly on his feet. 

At the hotel, he takes the elevator up to the second floor with Alex, Artem and Bryz. They're all silent, all just as exhausted. Alex follows Zhenya to his room, close on his heels like a well trained dog. Zhenya sighs and lets him in, only bothering to take off the jacket of his tracksuit before collapsing into the bed. Alex plops down next to him, making the mattress bounce. 

"We are playing cards tomorrow," he says firmly, brooking no argument. Zhenya sighs and throws his arm over his eyes. Maybe, if he pretends to be asleep, Alex will leave him alone. It's unlikely, but still a nice thought. 

"Come on," Alex wheedles, throwing himself against Zhenya and wrestling him to the ground. The only reason Zhenya doesn't elbow him in the nose is because Nastya won't love him anymore, and she makes the best honey cake outside of his own mother. "We aren't even going outside! I'll even bring the boys to you, you lazy fuck. We miss you." _I miss you_ , Zhenya hears, and it twists something inside of him. How much has he missed, sneaking away to play with Sidney in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar territory?

"You see me every day." Zhenya thumps his knee against Alex's ass and laughs when Alex gives him a gap-toothed grin.

"Oh, tiger," Alex simpers, doing a terrible impression of a woman batting her eyelashes. "How could I live without your big nose and skinny little calves? In fact, I'm wasting away-"

Zhenya throws his hips and has a sweaty, elbow and knee filled wrestle until he manages to get Alex pinned well enough to sit on his stomach. Alex grunts, slapping at Zhenya's face, but Zhenya has those blessed few inches on him to stay away. He smiles sweetly, and remembers when he'd been smaller than Alex, late to his growth spurt and always the one on the bottom of the dogpile. It's nice to, for once, be the one in control. 

"Do you treat all your ladies this way?" Alex asks, wheezing when Zhenya shifts his weight more towards his chest. 

"Only the ugly ones," Zhenya replies. Alex's eyes widen, and Zhenya has just enough time to laugh before it's an all-out match again, the both of them playing dirty with ticklish spots and elbows in soft places and over a decade of familiarity with each other's moves. In the end, Zhenya gets foiled by his own dresser and Alex pins him down in a headlock, his face rubbing against the shag carpet and his throat trapped under the massive weight of Alex's forearm. 

"I win," Alex pants. "You have to play cards with us." Zhenya pinches him before he taps out. 

"Fine," Zhenya gasps. Alex rolls off of him, grinning like an idiot, and sprawls out on the floor. Zhenya hesitates. He had wanted Sidney to show him around Canada for one last night, one more taste of new food, of Sidney's weird little laugh and maybe even Flower and Kris' dry humor in the face of Zhenya's wonder and Sidney's- everything. "I want- I want to invite a few more players." Alex lifts himself up onto his elbows, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"What, Artem? He's a shark and he won't even drink any of the whiskey we got from the bar." Alex's tone is testing, waiting for Zhenya to break. Zhenya both loves and hates that he knows him so well. 

"Canadians."

"You can't be fucking serious," Alex says. He pops up, his hair a riot and his Saint's pendant turned all the way around backward. "What, you just want to go knock on Marchand's door and give him your face to punch in person?"

"Crosby," Zhenya says, reluctant to give the name up. Sidney is- Sidney is his secret. Sidney is weird and kind and laughs too much and plays the best hockey Zhenya has ever seen in his life. They're only halfway through the series, but Zhenya can feel the weight of the final hanging over him. He's going to miss the strange, kind, wonderful Canadian weirdo when it's all over. "Letang and Fleury." 

"Zhenya." Alex sits up all the way, crossing his legs under him like a schoolboy. "I think you have some explaining to do." He keeps his knee pressed into Zhenya's ribs, just a threat of pain if the truth doesn't finally come out, and Zhenya sighs. 

"I've been…" He covers his face with his hands and tries to find the right words that won't paint him as guilty of anything, but Alex is going to be pissed no matter what. "Hanging out with Crosby. Since Toronto."

"Toronto? You've been ditching us to hang out with a _Canadian_?" Alex's voice rises, all the bravado he usually brings front and center, but Zhenya knows him well enough to hear the hurt under it. He'd been a bad captain, a bad friend. A bad brother. Zhenya shoves down the guilt and takes a deep breath. 

"It was an accident! He was just there when I went to go shopping, and I haven't been able to shake him off." Zhenya shrugs. He _likes_ Sidney. He even liked Flower and Kris, in their own specific ways. They reminded him of Sasha, a little, especially Flower with the mischief radiating out from him like a sun. "After the last game, I went out with them to a bar."

"Wait-" Alex's knee slams into Zhenya's rib as he jerks, and Zhenya grunts. "When we went to get you in Winnipeg-"

"Sidney Crosby was hiding in my bathroom," Zhenya reluctantly admits. "He's- he's nice. I swear. We talk about hockey. He's just so-" There are no words in any language to describe Sidney. He's a weird little ray of sunshine, eager and bright and curious and unintentionally funny and _kind_. At home, no one spoke to strangers. At home, it wasn't alright to smile at someone on the street- suspicious, uncomfortable. But Sidney- Sidney brought his crooked smile to anyone nearby, and their joy in being inside of that little sunbeam was easily felt. 

"You've been blowing us off to hang out with a _Canadian_ ," Alex says. He kicks at Zhenya's stomach, too hard to be an accident, his bright blue eyes turning dark as a storm. This, Zhenya thinks with guilt climbing into his throat, is why he hadn't told before. 

"It was an accident! Every time I turned around, he was right there with his big, sad face. He made the rest of the team do the handshake after the first game. He's- he just really likes hockey."

"You and your puppies," Alex says dismissively, his nose turned up. There isn't forgiveness in the sound of his voice. Not yet. "Ten o'clock, after the game, here. We're playing rummy, and the Canadians can put down booze or money for when they lose." Alex stands up and brushes imaginary dirt from his track pants, his eyes not meeting Zhenya's. Not preferans. Not a game meant for Russians and Russians only. Zhenya doesn't know if that's a peace offering, or some sort of bizarre Alex specific challenge. 

"Alex-"

"I'm going to wipe the floor with them." Alex closes the door hard behind himself, not quite a slam, but loud enough to make his point. Zhenya presses his shoulders into the floor, lets himself feel solid for the first time in too long, before eventually getting up. 

Zhenya fixes his hair as much as he can before trooping out into the hall and knocking on the door next to his. It feels like years have passed since the last time he asked for Duper's help, but it's only been days. Time has shifted and warped, his entire life spent in hotels in Canada, and when Duper answers the door, Zhenya feels like he's aged a decade in the span of minutes. This is so stupid. 

"Where is room of Crosby?" Zhenya asks.

"Gonna say thank you again?" Duper bares his teeth in a big smile and Zhenya has to bite back the urge to bare his own teeth. He waits and Duper shakes his head. "He's always in 407. It's his special room."

"Yes, okay, thank you," Zhenya says, moving away. Duper reaches out and grabs Zhenya's arm, his grip surprisingly strong. 

"Sid's a good guy, eh?" Duper's eyebrows are raised high, his face inscrutable. Zhenya feels like a criminal, like a traitor. 

"Yes. Good guy." He shrugs away from Duper's hand and moves toward the elevator. If Duper stops him again, he'll lose his nerve. Thankfully, Duper doesn't have anything else to say. Zhenya boards the elevator and rides the two floors up, his stomach bubbling with nerves when it stops. Sidney might not even be in his room. He could be at practice, or eating, or doing anything. Maybe he won't even want to come, especially right after playing each other. Zhenya's always had hot blood in him, but he's never said no to a round of free drinks from an opponent, or a game of pool. Maybe Sidney's the same, or maybe he has an ugly side to him that Zhenya hasn't seen yet. 

Zhenya peeks his head out, checking for signs of anyone out and about, but the hall is clear. He scuttles to 407 and knocks four times before shoving his hands into his tracksuit pants. He's too big, too obvious, to be seen. If just one person looks out at the wrong time- Then again, Sidney doesn't seem to be keeping this secret as much as Zhenya is. 

"Evgeni?" Sidney opens his door wider and Zhenya scuttles in, his pulse settling down as soon as he's out of range from anyone that isn't trusted, kind Sidney. 

"We play cards tomorrow after game," Zhenya says. He crosses his arms over his chest, feeling both too big and too small at once. "You want come?"

"Me?" Sidney asks, his crooked smile on full display. "Your team?"

"Quiet. Me and three of guys." Zhenya hopes Alex doesn't bring the whole team down to his room to gawk at the Canadians he's accidentally acquired, but he doesn't think he will. Alex is too interested in his own interests to choose Zhenya's embarrassment. "You take Flower and Kris. We play for whiskey. Good stuff only."

"Kris is really good," Sidney warns, but he doesn't seem wary at all. Just his open, wide smile like the sun. "Hope you can put your money where your mouth is."

"Don't understand," Zhenya says, which is true. "Room 201. Ten o'clock tomorrow."

"We'll be there," Sidney says. He stretches his hand out and Zhneya takes it. He shakes and holds on for a long moment. It feels wrong, monumental, _foregin_ to invite Sidney to see into his world. He wants him to like it. He wants him to understand. 

Zhenya spends the next three hours pacing around his too-big, too quiet room. He tries to do his homework, tries to entertain himself with English TV, even tries to get off quick and dirty in his too-soft bed, but he's too restless to do anything. Tomorrow is their last game in Canada. Tomorrow, they have to pull ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha ha. Ha ha. I have one more chapter written in full. The rest is going to be all of us on a wild ride that I have no idea about. Remember how I said I'd burn myself? The oven is ON


	11. Chapter 11

The arena is almost silent. Zhenya looks up around the full seats, at all the red and maple leaves and stony faces. Canada is not home. Canada doesn't have the same _need_ to win this. But looking at the storm on Kris' face from across the ice, at the careful coldness of Sidney's eyes, he thinks maybe, maybe they do. They have nothing left to prove but themselves, but that still counts for something. 

When the puck drops, it doesn't matter anymore. Zhenya lines up against Sidney, counts to three, and steals the puck. He has a game to win, and he's going to win this fucking game. 

Marchand gets called for nearly taking Artem's head off with his stick barely two minutes into the first period. He shouts the whole way to the box, and Alex makes faces at him outside of it. Zhenya shouldn't let him, should remind him to be a professional, but he'd do the same if he could. 

Alex gets the first one in on that power play. Price jumps the wrong way, his head toward Zhenya as Zhenya barrels down toward him. Kris and Burns are close behind him, ready to knock him down, but he sees Alex taking his spot, finally _being_ there, and he shoots off a pass that Alex reads easily. At least, Zhenya thinks as he grabs Alex around the head to hug him, their argument hasn't touched this place. 

Marchand is barely out of the box before he goes right back not even five minutes later, this time for ramming his elbow into Tarasenko's throat. Zhenya hears the sound of Vlad taking in a sharp breath, even from half a dozen feet away, choked. It doesn't even feel like advantage when he goes back out for the second power play. It feels like the wrong side of desperation, and Marchand will learn to settle or learn to lose. 

It seems like second verse is going to be the same as the first. Sidney wins the puck off the faceoff, but Artemi steals it away and starts towards the Canadian goal. He's swarmed before he gets to the blue line, but he gets a shot off to Zhenya, and Zhenya gets a pass to Alex and it sinks home again. Alex's head is thrown back as he comes in to accept pats on the back. 

"Let's make it three, yeah?" Zhenya asks as they pant their way back to the bench. Alex shows off the gap in his teeth and knocks his fist against Zhenya's. 

The rest of the first is a grind. Canada finally stops trying to put all of their players on defending just one guy. It cramps up some of the free room Zhenya was getting used to, but his team is nothing if not adaptable, and Andrei blocks shot after shot after shot, barely even moving in his net. 

"Keep up the good work," is all Bobrov says before the period is set to start. Zhenya wants to bite him like a vicious dog for not- for not _feeling_ it the way the rest of them are. For not _getting_ it. Instead, he troops back out onto the ice and plans on doing good work despite it. 

Neither team can keep the puck in one end or the other. It's an endless race back and forth, Zhenya's legs burning and his heart beating fast. He nearly runs Skinner down when the kid steps in front of him and has to jump out of the way. Burns _does_ run him down and Zhenya bites the inside of his cheek so hard it bleeds. 

Zhenya's on the bench when he sees Sidney carrying the puck down the ice, faking out each man in white all the way from one side of the rink to the other. He hits at full speed, throwing the puck across the front of the net to Carter. Carter taking a quick shot that goes just a little wide. It should have been fine, but then there was Kuzy trying to grab the puck. Zhenya sees it in slow motion, the way Kuzy's skate catches an edge and then him going down right in front of the net. The puck bounces from his skate as he tries to get up, and the goal lights go off. 

For the first time the crowd actually cheers.

It doesn't matter, though. Not really, because Kuzy redeems himself with a bar-down shot that turns Flower legs over head off a pass from Zhenya, and Artemi gets another one late into the period while the Canadians flounder. Four to one isn't a bad way to end a second period. Not in Zhenya's books. 

The frustration in the third period is like an entirely other player in the building. Whatever the Canadian coach said seems to have worked, though, because it's suddenly damn hard to get past center. It's the slowest the Canadians have played so far, all of them passing more than they're shooting, playing an obnoxious game of keepaway that Zhenya can't keep up with. 

Sidney is everywhere. He's a monster to behold, too heavy to be called light on his feet, but maybe more like he's flying. It's the only explanation for how he's in every corner Zhenya is, how he keeps stopping great passes with his stick, how he takes too many close-call shots on Andrei. He isn't the one to get the second Canada goal, but he's the one that slingshots the puck half-way down the ice to one of the Staals for a breakaway. 

With ten minutes left, they manage to make it into the Canadain side and _stay_ there. Alex, Kuch and Artemi circle the net like buzzards, waiting for the puck that keeps jumping back and forth to settle just right. Artemi gets smashed into the boards by Thornton, but the puck sails just perfectly to land on Kuch's stick and ricochet in. 

Five to two. They just have to protect their lead for eight, seven, six more minutes. Zhenya can feel the win beating through him already. He wants a goal. He has three assists, he can get a goal if Kris and Burns would just get out of _damn_ way. He crashes right into Sidney on his last good run at the net, almost shocked at how solid he is, how he gets stopped dead in his tracks by a man smaller than him. 

One minute before the end of the game, Alex gets a breakaway, just him and the ice in front of him and Zhenya running hard behind him, just in case. He _wants_ Alex to get the hat trick. _Wants_ him to be praised the way he should be, here in _home of the game_. The shot fails, and Zhenya's shot fails, and then Sidney has the puck and is flying away, Toews on his heels. And just like on the other side, Sidney's shot misses, but Toews' doesn't. 

It's an admirable last attempt, but the game ends. Them five, Canada three. They've won game four. They've got the lead back. Zhenya catches Alex when Alex jumps into his arms, laughing and nearly goes straight down onto the ice when Kuzy and Artem join in on the dogpile. The crowd is so loud around them, but it's not the cheer of good will. It's- it's booing. Canada is booing their own team, who had played a good game, but not a good enough one. 

"You play good," Zhenya says, his hand tight around Sidney's when they reach the line. Sidney's jaw clenches and Zhenya pulls him in closer so he doesn't have to yell over the booing. "I tell you. You play good."

"Thank you," Sidney says, eyes down as the crowd keeps shouting their anger. Canada. Zhenya had been told that the hockey was rough but that the people were nice. He'd been told wrong. "You too."

He works his way down the line, shouts to be heard over the crowd. Many of the Canadians barely touch his skin, but Kris looks at him with sure, certain eyes and at the end of the line, Flower once again takes Zhenya's hand into both of his, mouth flat and the mischievous glint from his eyes gone. 

"We will win tonight," he says. 

"Maybe," Zhenya says, because it is the kindest thing he can offer. 

\---

At a quarter-to-ten, someone knocks on his door and he races to answer it, his palms sweaty and his heart racing. When he throws open the door and just sees Artemi and his riot of curls, he deflates. 

"I brought snacks," Artemi says, holding up a few bags of chips. He kicks his shoes off and makes himself comfortable on the floor next to the little coffee table. He's second youngest after Kuzy, the ones that always have to sit on the floor when there aren't enough seats. It's been a long time since Zhenya was in that position and he doesn't miss it at all. 

Kuzy and Alex show up next, Alex with a fresh bottle of Canadian whiskey and Kuzy with the same pack of cards they've been playing with for the last five years. Alex drags over the desk chair, making a face that means he doesn't think Sidney or the others will show up. Kuzy steals a cushion and sits next to Artemi, breaking into one of the bags of chips. 

"You've really been hanging out with the Canadians," he asks, voice flat and eyebrows up. "Who are you?"

"Shut up," Zhenya says, embarrassed in a way he can't explain. The clock ticks over to ten and Zhenya's stomach feels heavy as he waits for the knock. 

"Your imaginary friends aren't here," Alex says, pouting. "I think that means we get a one card handicap each." 

"I'll handicap you," Zhenya says and reaches over to hit Alex in the side of the head. They tussle until three sharp raps echo through the room. Zhenya is too busy being stuck in a headlock to open the door, but Kuzy flies to his feet and across the room like gravity has no impact on him. 

"Hello," he coos as he throws the door open. Sidney, Kris and Flower stand in a perfect triangle at the door, Sidney clutching a bottle of his own whiskey and saying something sharp to Flower. "How old? Is important for sitting. Come in, or Gonch will yell. Come, come-"

Zhenya bats at Alex until he can free himself, smiling sheepishly at Sidney from across the room. They work out the seating, Artemi and Kuzy on the floor on one side of the table, Zhenya, Flower and Kris on the couch on the other side. Alex caps off one end in the desk chair and Sidney on the floor on the other, his knee bumped up against Zhenya's ankle. It's messy and not even at all- Zhenya's back will ache from hunching over the table- but it'll work well enough. 

"Guest is deal first," Alex says with a sticky sweet smile as he hands the deck off to Kris. Kris gives his own sweet smile back and shuffles with a flair at the end. Flower grins, his eyes sharp as he takes his hand in. Zhenya holds his own hand close to his chest. He doesn't trust Flower not to cheat. "Zhenya doesn't tell us about new Canadian friends. Very selfish of him."

"Sid hasn't stopped talking about Evgeni since before you even got here," Kris says dryly. He lays out the draw pile and flips the first card. "I don't know how many times he made us watch-"

"I appreciate good opponents," Sidney says sharply, not looking up from his hand. Flower snickers and reaches for the draw pile. Alex slaps his hand, fast as a shark. 

"There is special rule. You don't put down cards for your turn, you take drink." Alex cracks the lid of the whiskey Sidney had brought and places it in the center of the table. "We have three day until plane. Hope you drink good." 

"Oh, god-" Sidney puts his head in his hand and shakes it. 

"You're on," Kris says, returning Alex's smile with one of his own, both of them feral beasts growling at each other. It's going to be a long, dangerous night. At least Zhenya's opening hand looks good. 

"Tell us," Kuzy says as he takes his first drink of the round, mouth messy with whiskey because he is a hedonistic _child_. "How do you make friends with Zhenya? He's shy, you see."

"Fuck you," Zhenya mutters at him in Russian. He kicks him for good measure, but that just makes Kuzy's grin even wider. This was a bad idea. 

"Yeah, Sid," Flower says brightly, eying the deck as Alex discards and takes his own drink. "Tell us."

"It's boring-"

"We're like to know," Artemi says. He smiles sweetly, looking up at Sid through his curly bangs and playing up the baby face he's always teased for. It's too late for him now, Zhenya thinks, despondent. He's left the child alone with Alex and Kuzy and they've ruined him for life. 

"Well-" Sidney draws, discards, and takes a drink from the bottle. "We, uh, ran into each other in Toronto and got along. There's not a lot to say." He shrugs. It's truth in the bare bones of it but it doesn't feel right. Maybe it's the language. Maybe it's just Zhenya himself, always making too big a deal of the smallest of things. 

"Boring, Sid," Alex says. "I see why he like." Kuzy, Artemi and Flower laugh. It's going to be a long, long night. 

There isn't much hockey talk at all. Mostly shit talk about the current progress of the game- Kris does win the first round, but Artemi somehow wins the second- and one-up stories of things they'd done as kids. Sidney tells a story about being caught ice skating at three am by one of his neighbors and how he'd pretended to be sleepwalking. Kuzy tells the story of the first night shipment run he'd gone on with Sasha and how he'd nearly pissed himself in fear walking back loaded up with booze and cigars. Zhenya doesn' tell any stories at all, just leans back against the couch, plays his cards, and takes his drinks when he deserves them. 

It feels normal. Achingly normal. Like being back at the apartments, all gathered around a dinner table bullshitting each other. Alex gets in a few nasty jibes that teeter close to crossing the line, but he'd always done that at home, too. Flower has no poker face but he manages to, somehow, spike the top of the bottle with a handful of salt and barely even giggles when Kuzy takes the next drink. It ends with whiskey on the table and Flower vaulting over the couch as Kuzy races to his feet before nearly falling down. 

The Canadians are just…. guys. Weird and silly and dirty and normal. Zhenya knows that. Has always known that no matter how the papers back home talked, that they weren't some mythical multi-headed beast. But it's different to see it so close, crashing straight into his own world like a cannon. 

They have to stop after round four- the third won by Kris again and the last one by Zhenya himself- because of the hour and the tipsy lean to everyone's bodies. Sidney, who had played particularly poorly, was asleep under the table, curled up into a giant lump. Alex and Kris do one more round of _my girlfriend is hotter_ before Zhenya begins picking up the cards and tucking them back into their box. Some of them are a little damp, but it's not like they haven't seen worse. 

"Good game," Alex says to Kris and Flower as they stand to leave. He looks at Zhenya and some of the fire is gone. They'll be okay. "See you tomorrow." He collects Artemi and Kuzy from their own sprawls on the floor, kicking them until they get up. They throw cursory goodbyes over their shoulders and shuffle out of the room, muttering about finding food. 

"Rochambeau to carry him," Flower says, waving a hand down at Sidney. He looks tired too, all the manic energy from early burned down to an ember. He'd played harder than the rest of them barely a handful of hours ago. He had to be exhausted. 

"He can stay here," Zhenya offers. "You have time for up?" Kris stares at him for a long moment, eyes drink shiny but hard. Flower thumps him in the arm with a heavy, slow elbow. 

"Free day," Kris says. "We leave the day after for Sweden. Don't need him back until then." He holds his hand out and Zhenya takes it. The shake is much firmer off the ice, different with bare skin. "We'll see you in Russia."

He and Flower leave with the last half of the second bottle of whiskey, bickering at each other in slurs of sound that Zhenya assumes is French. As soon as the door closes, Zhenya feels the exhaustion hit him like a wave. In three days, he goes back home. In two days, he'll have a little over a week without visits from Sidney. Time back to spend with his proper family and refocus himself. 

But, now, he has the problem of leaving Sidney in a ball on the floor or trying to heft him up onto the couch on his own. If it were Alex passed out he'd be eating shag all night, but usually he does something to deserve the sore back and cricked neck. Sidney had only committed the crime of being purely out drunk. Zhenya sighs and carefully lifts the coffee table up and out of the way, fitting it against the wall. 

"Okay," he says to himself. He's lifted boulders half his size. He's caught and held Alex in his arms more than once, on and off the ice. He can lift Sidney and his giant ass and all that deadweight up a few feet off the ground. 

He eyes Sidney for the best handholds, looks for the best path. The couch is only a foot or so away, but Sidney's not angled right to just roll him up onto it. Lifting is going to have to happen at some point. It never even occurs to him to try to shake Sidney awake, to see if he can stumble up there himself. 

Instead, he squats down next to the ball of hockey player and gently turns him onto his back. Sidney's nose scrunches, his head lolling to the side, but he doesn't make a sound. The collar of his t-shirt has been stretched out, his thin gold necklace bunched up around his Adam's apple. He sleeps with his mouth open. It's knowledge that Zhenya isn't sure that he wants. Carefully Zhenya tucks one arm under Sidney's shoulders and the other under the warm bend of his knees. 

"If you move, I'm going to drop you," Zhenya warns, too soft and in the wrong language besides, and counts himself off. On three he lifts up, rolling Sidney into him as best he can and takes the five awkward steps to couch. His thighs shake as he squats back down, laying Sidney down onto the cushions as gently as he can. His head is spinning. This is an accomplishment that no one else was there to bear witness to. 

Sidney's eyes do squint open as Zhenya tries to pull his arms out from under him. They're just slits of gray and black, unseeing, but Zhenya gets stuck on them, guilty and suddenly terrified for no reason at all. The corner of Sidney's mouth twitches, just a little, and his eyes close again. 

"It's you," Sidney mumbles. 

"Sleep," Zhenya whispers. He frees his arms and can't help smoothing down the staticky curls at the side of Sidney's cheek. 

He peels off his shirt before crawling into bed, hot from the booze, and thinks he hears Sidney's voice as he dives headfirst into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the distinctive impression that y'all will be thrilled come next chapter. Maybe. How would I know?


	12. Chapter 12

Zhenya wakes up slowly, groaning into his pillow. His head is tender, but he doesn't think he's in any danger of throwing up if he moves. Still, he lets himself bask in the sunlight coming in through the half open curtains, stretching out like a cat. Two days of freedom. To do whatever the hell he wants in Vancouver. He could even just stay right here in bed and catch up on all the sleep he probably needs. Instead, he reluctantly rolls to his feet and shakes his head to clear out the last of his tiredness. 

Sidney is still asleep on the couch, turned over to flop on his stomach, the knuckles of one hand scraping against the carpet. His mouth is open against his other bicep, wet like he's been drooling. He's just a little too tall to lay on the couch properly, so his knees are pushed up just enough to leave him with his ass in the air, which is funny in a way but also-

Zhenya pulls on his track jacket and shoes, grabs his key from the dresser, and quietly exits into the hall. The rest of the floor is quiet, his team either down getting breakfast or sleeping it off. He takes the stairs down to the restaurant area, grabs the plate handed to him and another, claiming it's for his ill friend still upstairs. The woman with the food gives him a look, but she doesn't complain when he grabs two apples and two mugs of coffee. He tucks the apples into his tracksuit pockets, balances the mugs on the edges of the plates, and carefully makes his way back upstairs. 

He has to set one plate down to fight with the key, but he's able to get everything inside without spilling too much. Part of him had expected that Sidney would already be gone, but Sidney is still right where Zhenya left him. Zhenya sets the plates, apples, and coffee onto the table and pulls up the chair Alex had used the night before. 

"Sidney," he calls gently. Sidney doesn't budge. Zhenya tries again, a little louder, and then gives it up as lost and pushes at Sidney's hip with his foot until Sidney bolts upright, his hair a tangled mess and the pattern of the upholstery stamped into his cheek. His eyes are unfocused, but he snaps to himself pretty quickly, rubbing a hand over his face and yawning. "Food. Coffee." Zhenya takes in his own first drink of coffee and feels a little more human for it. 

"Thank you," Sid slurs through a yawn. He clumsily grabs a piece of burnt bacon and sticks it in his mouth, sucking on it like candy with half still laying blackened over his lip. Somehow it is the most peculiar thing he's ever done.

"How is head?" Zhenya asks. Sidney closes his eyes, bacon still dangling between his teeth, and tilts his head back and forth like he's really considering it.

"I'll live," he says, eyes squinting shut. It wrinkles his beak of a nose and Zhenya can't help laughing. The great and ferocious Sidney Crosby, leader of the fearsome Canadians, half asleep and hungover, as dangerous as a kitten on Zhenya's borrowed couch. "What?"

"You not drink much, yes?" Zhenya asks. He grimaces at the burnt edges of his own bacon but shovels it down. He's had worse. Sidney glares balefully at him over a forkful of rubbery eggs. It's the worst meal they've ever shared, but Zhenya think it might be his favorite so far. 

"Ovechkin." Sidney stuffs his cheeks with bad eggs, eyes dark, and Zhenya laughs so hard he can't breathe. 

"He is worst, yes," he agrees. It should feel strange to have Sidney here, blurry from sleep and so unlike the boy that dragged Zhenya across an entire city, but it feels comfortably familiar. 

"How-" a pause for a deep drink of coffee and a forkful of potatoes- "How are you even friends with him?"

"We get to school in same year," Zhenya says. Sidney hesitantly takes another bite of potato and waves his hand. "I'm little bit young when I went to school. Alex maybe a little bit old. But we start together. When we skate together-" Zhenya blows out a sigh. "And he's big and loud, but first fight I'm in with bigger boys, Alex stand beside me. We both see nurse after, but he's fight for me."

Zhenya had been so small for his age. Alex hadn't been too much bigger but it was enough that the first round of students could ignore him. Zhenya had gotten the shoves in the barracks and the stick between his skates and the elbows to his face enough times to get the message. But the first time someone had tried to raise a fist at him, Alex had barged in with his cracking voice shouting and Sasha hovering nearby as backup. Alex, Zhenya and Sasha had stayed. Become the team. Those boys that never understood family had been removed swiftly and gracelessly.

"Don't make me like him," Sidney says. The scratch is leaving his voice as he eats and Zhenya almost misses it. "He's an asshole."

"Yes." Zhenya laughs. He's been around the world collecting insults to call Alex, but he likes the way _asshole_ sounds best. 

They finish their breakfasts in easy silence. When the coffee runs out, Sidney drags himself off the couch to refill their mugs with water. Zhenya would be more than happy to sit there all day, reclined in the plush armchair with only Sidney's soft sounds as company, but Sidney ruins those plans too soon. 

"I stink," Sidney says, frowning down at his damp tshirt. Zhenya snorts. The joke is too easy. "I need to take a shower and change, but-'' Sidney gnaws on the tines of his fork, the last of the food long gone. "Do you want to hang out today? Just, you know, in the hotel. We're leaving pretty early in the morning, so probably no more cards, but I have this cassette I think you'd like if you want to come over later." His voice moves faster, his words bumping together the longer he talks, but Zhenya understands the question. 

"Yes." 

"Meet me in my room in an hour," Sidney says, smile blinding. "Thanks for breakfast." Zhenya waves him off and leans back in his chair as Sidney loots around for his shoes. 

When Sidney is gone, Zhenya thinks about taking a nap or maybe going to check in on Artemi or, God above help him, visiting Alex. Instead he paces between the walls of his own room like a caged tiger, jumping at every noise but wound so tight he could have torn anything, anyone, to shreds before he caves and takes his own shower. 

He's ten minutes early to Sidney's room, in his nicest new jeans and his blue shirt with the bell sleeves. It had been a gift from Gonch, a silly little thing Zhenya had grown to love. He could never have the muscle in Alex's calves or the definition of Sasha's body, but his shoulders are wide and strong and when he turns his ass gives a nice profile. It's what he's running on and he feels stupid for even thinking about it. Sidney doesn't care what he looks like. It's stupid to even think about. Zhenya shouldn't feel bothered by it, but he wants Sidney to- something. 

Sidney answers the door with bright, awake eyes. He's traded in his grubby overnight clothes for a pair of bellbottoms and a brown polo with a double stripe running from collar to stomach. It suits him. Everything suits him.

"Hey." Sidney says, hands jammed into his back pockets. It feels weird to not have a plan to leave, to do anything but just be around each other because they want to be. There's something strange hanging in the room, heavy enough that Zhenya's heart beats faster under the weight. Sidney shifts from socked foot to socked foot. Maybe he feels it too. "I made a- Over here."

Sidney leads him over to the couch area, a mirror of where they'd been last night in Zhenya's room. The coffee table and couch have been pushed apart, leaving faint trails in the orange shag of the carpet where the legs dragged. On the edge of the coffee table, a portable tape recorder sits next to a stack of tapes. The record button is faded, the red worn down to flecks and the silver plate of the long body is chipped, probably from being packed away too much into Sidney's bags. 

"You have to listen to David Bowie from the floor," Sidney says, like it makes any sense whatsoever. "It's the rule." Zhenya wonders who had told him that rule- Flower, maybe- but he's more than happy to tug off his shoes and sprawl out over the floor next to the couch. He tucks one arm under his head and throws one leg up onto the couch, getting himself as comfortable as he can. 

Sidney presses play on the tape recorder and settles himself next to Zhenya. They fit easily enough in the space. Sidney's knees are drawn up, feet flat on the ground, his body angled so that they're under the table but his hair is touching Zhneya's in a strange tickle that Zhenya can't ignore. Zhenya closes his eyes and waits for the music. 

It's just drums for a few seconds, mellow and steady and then piano and a voice that Zhenya can't quantify. It sounds thin and reedy under the big piano, stretched like it's crying. It's distorted and quiet enough that Zhenya can only make out a word here or there. The voice is more of an instrument than the piano, so loud, just a pretty thing building along with the rest of them. 

"Five years," the man croons. It's the phrase Zhenya can pick out, repeating over and over again like a plea, more desperate each time. _Four games_ , Zhenya thinks from nowhere. They have four games. 

The song fades into something mostly different, more drum and less piano. Something a little more base, that voice a flat drone that Zhenya can't make out. He wishes it were louder, wishes he could understand what the man is saying better. But when the voice fades away, the music is mellow and catchy enough that he closes his eyes and just listens. 

It flows into heavy guitars and jangle crashes that sounds nothing at all like the music from home. Zhenya doesn't know if he likes it or not, but Sidney is humming under his breath, nodding his head to the quick beat of it. Their hair catches as he does it, a tingle in Zhenya's scalp keeping time with the beat. Zhenya finds himself doing the same thing, his heel tapping against the arm of the couch. He feels like he's already had some of Sasha's rot, a little dreamy and not quite on the floor where he left himself. 

The next song is Zhenya's favorite by far. It's still nothing at all like what he's used to listening to, definitely more of something that he would find in Sasha's wide collection of Western casettes than his own meager stash. He just likes the rhythm, the way he can't stop tapping his fingers against his chest. He can hear the faint thud of Sidney doing the same. 

"Starman," Zhenya says, unable to half sing along. "What is?" Sidney turns his head and Zhenya can feel the warmth of his breath, smell the fading trace of mint riding along with it. 

"It's a story about an alien rock star from Mars," Sidney says. Zhenya wrinkles his nose and Sidney laughs. When Zhenya turns his own head, he has to go nearly cross eyed to see Sidney properly. The next song starts, but Zhenya can't think of anything but the strange brown of Sidney's eyes. "He comes down to Earth five years before the world is going to end, plays music and has sex with everyone in his way and saves the world. But he dies anyway at the end." 

"All girls sad they lose," Zhenya says. Sidney's mouth moves, just a blur of pink too close to see in detail, and he shakes his head. 

"Boys too," he says softly. He turns his eyes back to the ceiling. "Listen."

Boys too, Zhenya thinks. He's vaguely aware of the first real fast song so far, the drive of guitar and cymbals, but his brain is stuck. _Boys too_. He had asked Sidney hundreds of hours ago if he had a girl waiting for him. He'd seen pretty waitresses practically unbuttoning their tops for Sidney's benefit and seen him not even give them a glance. _Boys too_. Maybe he had asked the wrong question. 

"This one's my favorite," Sidney says. The song is different from the others. It's not fast, not slow. Zhenya can actually hear the words of this one, can understand most of them, even if he's behind on the story. When he looks over, Sidney's mouthing along to the words, eyes closed, lost in the music. 

"Ziggy played guitar," Bowie sings, all the music falling away, Sidney's voice just a whisper as he sings along. Ziggy played guitar. Sidney played hockey. 

The last two songs play, short and sweet, but Zhenya can't focus on them. He's stuck on the way Sidney looks, so quietly pleased, his nose up in the air and the corner of his mouth curled into a tiny smile that hasn't gone crooked yet. _Boys too_. The tape fades away into silence and Sidney's eyes blink open. It's like the morning, soft and quiet and sleepy and far away from hockey at all. 

"Did you like it?" Sidney asks. He rolls onto his side, face open and concerned like he actually cares about Zhenya's opinion. 

"Yes," Zhenya whispers. The weight of the room has gotten suffocating. "Is more?"

"Yeah," Sidney says with a full force smile, crooked and nose scrunched. "Hang on." He rolls away and the air sucks away with his warmth. When he stands and fiddles with the tape recorder, all Zhenya can see is the shape of his legs through the denim of his jeans. There's the click of the recorder rewinding, then the sound of tapes being changed. 

When Sidney lays down again, he hands over the empty cassette box. Zhenya doesn't know what the name of it means, but there's a man on the cover with long, blonde hair, his otherworldly eyes tilted up, strange slash of a mouth red even under heavy grain. If Zhenya tilts the plastic just right, Bowie looks like a woman. The first song clicks to life, driving and not at all like they'd just listened to. 

"Turn and face the strange," Bowie sings and Zhenya can't help but comply. Sidney isn't looking at him, but his mouth is moving just a little. There's something about him that makes Zhenya ache. It's foolish and unexplainable and so wrapped up in violence and shopping and laughter and the need to win that Zhenya can't separate the threads. 

"Time may change me," Bowie sings, clear as a bell. "But I can't trace time."

"How's you think of him?" Zhenya asks, placing the plastic case on Sidney's chest. He can't draw in real breaths. He thinks he understands what Sidney's showing him, thinks he knows, but there are miles inside the inches between them and it matters. He needs to know. 

"He's-" Sidney looks away, his thumb rubbing over the edge of the cassette. "He's handsome." He doesn't quite glance over to meet Zhenya's eyes, the music still playing away in sweet guitars and drums. The thud of Zhenya's heart is so strong he can feel it in his hands, terror and excitement crashing together violently inside of him. 

"And me?" He asks, tongue sticky and dry with nerves. Sidney could laugh. Zhenya already knows the easy joke that means he's been let off the hook. He doesn't want to hear it. 

"More handsome," Sidney says quietly. He sits up all the way, pulling one knee up and resting his chin there. He licks his lips before he talks, eyes finally on Zhenya's face. "And me?"

"Beautiful." It's the only word Zhenya has. 

"Evgeni-" Sidney is so close, his heat bleeding into Zhenya's own body. The shag of the carpet bites into Zhenya's skin as he pushes himself onto one arm, his heartbeat thundering so loud in his ears he can't hear the music anymore. Something is going to shatter him here and he doesn't know what instrument is going to be used to do it but he can only hope that it's Sidney. Sidney, who raises a careful hand and lays it over Zhenya's cheek, his thumb at the vulnerable, thin skin below Zhenya's eye. "Can I-"

Sidney closes his eyes, braced for impact, and so, so slowly presses his lips to Zhenya's. They're warm and soft, same as anyone Zhenya has kissed before, but this is _Sidney_. Sidney who leads with his tongue and wraps himself around Zhenya's body like a snake. Danger. Temptation. Sin in a brown pullover and tight jeans.

He reaches up and pulls Sidney to the floor with him, folding Sidney into his body. He's warm and solid, a squirming, heavy weight that lands half on Zhenya's side and half on his chest. Sidney's lips drag over his, his teeth sinking in, and Zhenya can't help responding to him. It's a dance, he thinks, set to the guitars of Bowie playing somewhere miles and miles away from them. 

Zhenya has never been with a man before. He doesn't know what to do with the flat, wide shape of Sidney's chest or with the heat he can feel pressed to his hip. He only knows how to keep his mouth pressed to Sidney's, only knows how to kiss the tender, pale line of his throat, breathe in the smell of salt and skin and hair gel that smells like oil instead of flowers.

"Sidney-"

"Like this," Sidney says, gently taking hold of Zhenya's arm and putting it into place, palm open wide over Sidney's slowly stiffening cock. 

Sidney's mouth is still against his, his breath a magnet Zhenya can't help but be drawn to, but Zhenya's head is full of the weight of Sidney's cock against his hand. It burns even between the layer of cloth, familiar and distant all at once. His hips buck into Zhenya's touch, too trusting and too eager. 

"Evgeni, please-"

Fuck the Series. Zhenya has found his place here, at the service of Sidney Crosby's whims. 

"You want?" Zhenya asks, his fingers clamping down around the unfamiliar weight of Sid's cock. Sidney's hips buck, the hot, undeniable ridge of his cock, his undeniable maleness, pushing up into Zhenya's hand. It's so- _strange_ , and hasn't that been Sidney from the start? Hard to ignore, but impossible to resist and so damn _different_. 

"Please," Sidney asks, voice barely audible. "Please, Evgeni-"

Zhenya tests the shape of him, too terrified to touch bare skin. It doesn't seem to matter. Sidney's fingers close around Zhenya's wrist, holding him in place as Sidney rocks up into him. 

"Oh happiness is happening," Bowie sings as Zhenya grinds the heel of his plan against Sidney, feeling him jerk and twitch. Sidney's mouth breaks from his and Zhenya breathes in stale, sweaty air as Sidney bites at his throat, at the clothed stretch of his shoulder. 

"Fear's just in your head, only in your head." Bowie's voice is high and claustrophobic and bright and Sidney is making sharp sounds in counterpoint, just a few beats away from the right rhythm. 

He feels Sidney's climax- tense skin against his mouth, wet against his hand through a layer of cloth, the jerk and release cycle of Sidney's cock as it reaches for and evades Zhenya's touch. It's forbidden and heresy and _wrong_ , but as Sidney shivers against him through his orgasm all Zhenya can see is awe inspiring beauty. He is the direct cause for the throw of Sidney's head back, for the tender stretch of that throat, for the sticky mess pulsing and pulsing over their joined hands, soaking the fabric of between them. 

"Sidney," Zhenya says, mouth latched onto the pale throat so close to him. He wants to bite and tear. He wants to leave a mark. He wants to make a permanent reminder on Sidney's body, something he will never be able to forget or ignore. 

"Let me-" Sidney rolls them over, his bulk heavy over Zhenya's body for a too short moment. Sidney looms over him, haloed by the fluorescent lights above them. He tucks his fingers into the gaping waist of the jeans he had helped pick out from a store hundreds of miles away and pulls them down past Zhenya's hips. 

When he bends to kiss the soft, vulnerable skin of Zhenya's stomach, it feels like a promise. When he takes Zhenya's cock into his hot, hot mouth it feels like worship. Terrible and full of true awe and too much for Zhenya to bear. Sidney's blue green gray eyes stare up at him, taken over by the black of a demon, and Zhenya has to close his own to block it out. Sidney is going to kill him and Zhenya will willingly walk into the blade. 

"Why didn't I say," Bowie croons and Zhenya shakes apart into Sidney's mouth. A line has been torn apart and Zhenya doesn't know if it can be built up again. 

"Can't move," Zhenya says. He feels shattered in a thousand tiny different ways, all the splinters holding themselves together by sheer will alone. Sidney laughs and climbs his way back up Zhenya's body. 

"You can lay here for a while," he says. His rests his cheek against Zhenya's shoulder, his breath warm and his hair tickling against Zhenya's jaw, and Zhenya wishes he could stay there for weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Q&A time!
> 
>  **Do I have a lady boner for David Bowie?**  
>  Yes. Yes I do. Labyrinth was very formative for me. 
> 
> **Is that why I wrote many words in tribute to _The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars_ in the exact middle of my hockey fic?**  
> Yes and no. I was tickled pink when I realized that the album came out (ha) earlier in 1972 and knew like 4 months ago it had to be incorporated. 
> 
> **Could I pass up the story of a bisexual alien in a foreign place destroying himself?**  
>  No. No I really couldn't. 
> 
> **Can you blame me?**  
>  No. No you may not because I finally bumped the rating and gave you kisses. You indulge me, I indulge you. That is how this works, dammit.


	13. Chapter 13

The flight home is just as long and boring as the flight to Canada had been. Zhenya tries to sleep as much as he can but he's too wound up. They're going to have nine days once they're home to get used to the right sleep schedule again. At least the Canadians will have to suffer through it with them this time. 

Every time Zhenya closes his eyes, he sees Sidney behind them. Sidney, kissing him at the door one last time before he had to leave, mouth warm and fingers curled into Zhenya's shirt. Sidney, broad back hidden under a suit that fit just as well as Zhenya's as he turned away in the hotel lobby as he and his team left for Sweden. Sidney. 

It's pathetic. Zhenya does another loop up the aisle, fidgeting with the drawstring of his track pants. Pull tight to cut off air, release to breathe in. Gonch grabs him by the knee, one hand darting out and nearly sending Zhenya face first into the floor. Zhenya steadies himself on an empty seat and glowers. 

"Sit down before I make you sit down," Gonch warns, his fingertips sinking in around the cap of Zhenya's knee. He wouldn't, no matter how grouchy he gets, but he can make the next ten hours miserable easily. 

"Whatever, old man," Zhenya grumbles as he marches back to his seat. 

Alex had been all over him yesterday. As soon as they'd been packed up, all their things on the bus to be transported to the airport except for the next day's clothes, he'd grabbed Zhenya firmly by the arm and dragged him out into the cool Vancouver air and forced Zhenya to find a pizza place for him. They'd found the same place Sidney had taken him to, the chain with the red roof and the dim lights and Alex had gotten sauce on his face like a toddler.

When dusk set in, Alex brought him to a bar and they slow sipped terrible Canadian beer and shot even worse pool. They didn't talk about the series or the Canadians. Sidney's name didn't come up at all. They talked about home, about the three days of recovery that would be filled with family and home cooked Russian food. Alex talked about Nastya with the same wink and grin that he always did, but he faded off sometimes. He missed her. He loved her. 

And when Alex left for a refill of beer and returned with a pretty girl with long, straight hair and a mini dress, Zhenya finally gave in. Alex was trying to help. It was how it would have been if Zhenya hadn't drastically changed courses. He let Alex drop away to bother some poor bastard at the bar and let Beth tell him about Vancouver and nodded and smiled where he was supposed to. 

Zhenya had kissed a man. Zhenya had done more than that with a man. He wanted, painfully, to do more. It was confusing and upsetting and made his stomach turn the more he thought about it. When Beth leaned in, her perfume lavender sweet, Zhenya had kissed her, She was soft and nice and when she had laid her hand low over Zhenya's stomach, he'd responded to her touch. He still liked women. He just wanted Sidney more. 

Alex still thinks Zhenya managed to blow it somehow. Zhenya doesn't have the heart to tell him he'd sent Beth away with a quiet _sorry_. 

Zhenya leans his head against the window and closes his eyes. He wonders if Sidney's already introduced himself to the captain of the Swedish team yet. 

\---

Zhenya's apartment is on the third floor. His hockey equipment is still on the bus, ready to be brought back to the barracks, but he still has to haul his duffel bag of dirty clothes and toiletries upstairs. He can hear the Popovs arguing over a new kitchen item through the walls, can hear little Tema and Anna playing some game together just beside the front hall. This place of square stone and steel isn't as pretty as Canada, but it's home. His home. 

The smell of frying lamb hits him as soon as he opens the door. He closes his eyes and takes a breath in. Mama must have sweet talked crotchety old Gena at the butcher's. Zhenya hasn't been able to get lamb in months. Zhenya drops his bag in the hall, places his shoes on the rack, and walks the short distance to the kitchen. 

His mother is over the stove, the radio playing softly while she tends to the pan. His father is probably asleep in Zhenya's room. He handles air travel as well as Zhenya does. For a long moment, Zhenya just lets himself watch his mother bustle around his little kitchen. He's missed her. Letters can't capture the way she shakes her head at the state of Zhenya's spice cupboard or the way her hair curls in the same places Zhenya's does or the way she sways to the music while she rolls dough. 

Every time Zhenya sees her, she looks so much older. Frailer. More like a grandmother than the fiery woman that once chased off a wolf from their backyard when Zhenya was a child, armed with nothing more than a rolling pin. He only gets a few months a year to see her. Holidays. The rare time off from the next series or playoff or tournament. They live too far away to visit on days off, like Artemi can with his grandparents, and no amount of love or money could tear his father away from the dacha his own grandfather had built years and years ago. 

"Hi, Mama," Zhenya says and sets off the whirlwind. 

"Zhenechka." Mama wraps him up in her arms, flour and lard and grease smearing into Zhenya's clothes as she holds him close and smothers his cheeks with sticky lipsticked kisses. He laughs and squeezes her tight, pressing his face to her thin curls. He's three heads taller than her, shot past both her and his father sometime when they weren't allowed to look, but he feels like a little boy. 

After she's fussed over him from head to toe, his mother leads him to his own kitchen table and sits him down. She tends to her pans again, swatting at him blind when Zhenya reaches for a piece of chopped, uncooked potato. Zhenya cradles his sore hand to his chest and can't help smiling like an idiot. _Mama_. 

"Now, tell me everything," his mother says when she sits down. She takes one of his hands in both of hers, her cool fingers folding over his. "I want to hear all about Canada."

He tells her about the hotels and the stadiums and the games. They had watched them with the Ivanov family in their building, but she still asks him for details anyway. He tells her about Alex and Kuzy and Artemi, heavily editing the stories down for her benefit. Her eyes tell him she knows what he's was leaving out anyway. He hesitantly mentions making a friend out of Sidney. 

"Only you," she says fondly as she stands to turn her attention back to the stove. "Stuff. My turn to catch you up."

Zhenya folds messy pierogi after pierogi, stacking them up in a bowl while his mother gives him all the hometown gossip. The kitchen smells like home, like the burnished gold memories he has of being a little kid with no idea about anything outside. The only news he hears about Denis is that he's gotten married. 

The three of them eat dinner around Zhenya's little kitchen table and Zhenya retells all his stories for his father. He gives them their gifts- a shawl in red and white for his mother and a new leather band for his father's watch- and doesn't even try to help with the cleanup, stuffed too full to move. 

"I made extra for Alex," his mother tells him as she tucks away enough spare pierogi and varenyky to feed the entire team. He wonders if he'll have to hide it away from Bobrov once they're back in the barracks. 

"Alex doesn't deserve it," Zhenya grumbles. He's probably off getting fat on his own mother's cooking and Nastya's honey cake. His mother flicks his ear and Zhenya laughs. 

"You're doing well, son," his father says, some hours later on the balcony. It's small and cramped, more storage space than place for relaxation, but his mother refuses to let anyone smoke inside, regardless of who's place it is. "We're proud of you."

"Thank you," Zhenya says. He wonders if his father would be proud if he knew about Sidney. If his father would look at him with that weary, joyful look if he knew what Zhenya had done. What Zhenya hoped to do again. 

If Zhenya had thought to get any peace, he had been poorly mistaken. As if he can smell the lamb cooling in the refrigerator, Alex beats on the door just as Zhenya sits down to watch the news with his parents. Wine in one arm, Nastya on the other, Alex pushes his way inside and takes over the room. 

"I tried to stop him," Nastya says as she hands her coat to Zhenya. 

"You did not," Zhenya accuses. Nastya smiles, small and demure, before sticking her tongue out. She looks respectable, Zhenya thinks as Nastya goes to greet his parents, but there's a reason Alex is so head over heels for her. 

"You look more radiant every time I see you," Alex says as he tugs Zhenya's mother into a dance across the kitchen. She loves him, has cleaned up as many of his scrapes as Zhenya's. Zhenya doesn't think Denis has ever met him. 

"You can keep him," Nastya says, opening the wine. She pours a glass for each of them, as at home as Alex. She pinches Alex's cheek as he waltzes by and Alex beams, a little kid being spoiled in affection.

"Don't curse my mother that way," Zhenya says as he takes his glass.

It's the most relaxed evening he's had in months. Zhenya sips his wine and settles in for the same stories told the third time over and doesn't think about hockey or Sidney at all. 

Eleven more days until game five. 

\--- 

Zhenya has one single day of doing nothing but talking to his parents and getting stuffed full of food that he will dream about while he's eating in the cafeteria. Then he has to pack up what he needs for the barracks and take the hour drive in with Artem and Kuch. His parents won't be able to stay for the whole rest of the series, but they'll stay in his apartment until after the first game before they have to leave. 

Moscow never stops being breathtaking. It rises up as they leave the little town his apartment is in, color and steel piled high and an abrupt break from nature. He doesn't press his face to the backseat window like a child but he wants to. Magnitogorsk is one of his homes. His first. But Moscow seduced him from the moment he first took step in it a dozen years ago and never let him go. He wonders what the Canadians will think of it. He wonders what Sidney will think. 

Zhenya watches familiar landmarks pass by and feels the safety of _home_ sink into his bones. The barracks aren't too far away from the heart of the city, nestled away in any other similar apartment complex hidden between the others. The practice facility isn't as large as the Luzhniki complex, but as Zhenya watches the blurry shape of it fly by he aches for ice the right size, for words he knows, for a land that makes sense. 

Zhenya is fully unpacked by time Alex barges into their room, his single duffel bag over his shoulder and his face still smeared with baby pink lipstick. All of the quiet is sucked away in the moment, Alex already bitching about the too-small bed away from his woman and the stink no lye can get out of Zhenya's socks. 

"You could sleep on the floor," Zhenya says as he flops onto his bed. "Or in Kuzy's room. I'm sure you'll be very happy together." Alex flicks a rude gesture at him. 

"You would miss me too much," he says. He places a new photo on the dresser next to his bed carefully, fingertips lingering over the chipped frame. Zhenya looks at the matching smiles on Alex and Nastya's faces, the way Alex's arm is wrapped securely around her waist, pulling her into his body. 

"When are you going to make an honest woman out of her?" Zhenya asks, waving his hand at the photo. Alex pauses, his shoulders pulled tight under his tshirt. He reaches into his duffel bag and digs around for a moment before pulling out a little black box. It looks so small, balanced on the large palm of Alex's hand. 

"After the series," he says, cracking the lid of the box. The ring is simple, silver band and crest of three diamonds. It probably cost a fortune of hard saved cash and a bigger fortune in owed favors. It's cold under Zhenya's fingertips as he touches the half-buried band. "Think she'll say yes?"

"Only if you beg," Zhenya says. 

Alex's face is so different when Zhenya really lets himself look. His jaw isn't round anymore, square under the short beard he's been wearing for the last few years. His eyes fall deeper back than they used to under his heavy eyebrows. The gap in his front teeth has spread over the last two years, a more permanent feature than the smile Zhenya remembers from childhood. From their teen years. There are already the faint traces of gray peeking out from behind Alex's ears, just a few strands here and there. He's not even thirty yet and already going gray. 

Alex has grown up without Zhenya even noticing. In that moment, cradling the engagement ring in his own hand, Zhenya wonders where his best friend went. How the boy with the big eyes and big laugh and endless prank ideas turned into this _man_ without him even blinking twice. Zhenya wonders if Alex sees it in him, too. If Zhenya's face has changed, if his body has changed, if _he_ has changed. 

He thinks he has. He thinks the damage is irreversible. 

"She does like it when I beg," Alex says with his toothy smile and Zhenya aches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 41k written. Ending now set in stone. Hand carved it myself. Only four more games and a lot of feels left to go ;______________; Also, those authors than can pop off a 50k fic every three months: I hate you. You are terrifying.


	14. Chapter 14

Three days left. Three days until game five. Two days until Team Canada touches down in Russia. Zhenya has been pacing his cage of a room between endless practice after endless practice, skin too tight for his body and mind too busy to sleep. Gonch chews him out for forgetting his English homework twice and Alex punches him exactly once, late at night when Zhenya should have been sleeping. He'd been too wired to sleep, his schedule still screwed by Canada time, and Alex, half asleep and lumped under his blankets, shot a hand out and pegged Zhenya in the thigh hard enough to dead-leg him. 

Zhenya wants the series to be over. He can't- he can't keep up with the race of his thoughts and fucking _Bobrov_ and the pressure building and building in his chest, the weight of a whole nation like a stone sending him to the bottom of the ocean. He wants the series to be over so he doesn't have the threat, the promise, of Sidney Crosby hanging over his head every single moment. 

Canada won one of their games and tied for the other. 

After dinner, Zhenya pulls on his running shoes and a real coat. Canada had been almost warm the whole time he'd been there, but Russian winter starts in October and the air outside is frigid and biting. He wraps the plaque with the Toronto seal in a towel, the edges sharp and protruding through the thin cotton. He doesn't sneak out the window this time, nearly flaunts his disregard for Bobrov's _no travel_ rule. Four more games, all here in Moscow. There is nothing left for Bobrov to do to him. 

The path to Coach's house is just as worn as it's ever been, only the barest brush of snow hiding the dirt. Zhenya watches his sneakers kick aside half-frozen rocks in the dim light from the setting sun, forcing himself not to think of anything at all. There is always a challenge. There is always a mountain to be climbed. This is another one. Flat and familiar, but when Zhenya starts up the stairs to Coach's apartment, he feels breathless. 

"Zhenya," Nina says when she opens the door, already pulling him into a damp-handed hug. She must have been doing dishes when Zhenya arrived. "Look at you!"

"It's only been a few weeks," Zhenya says, letting himself be ushered through the hall and into the sitting room, the plaque trapped under his arm. Nina clucks her tongue. 

"So much can happen in a few weeks," she says. "Anatoli is putting Tatyana to bed. She'll be upset she missed you."

"Will you be at the games?" Zhenya asks. He doesn't know if it would be better or worse, Coach sitting in the stands with thousands of other people, just one more nameless face a smudge in the background instead of shouting at them from behind the bench. The corners of Nina's lips tighten, just for a moment, before she smiles at him. 

"Maybe," she says. She ghosts her hand over Zhenya's hair, growing too long without her there to cut it for him. "Let me get you something to drink." 

After Zhenya has been given a glass of water and a little pile of olives, Coach joins him, cigar already in hand. He looks thinner, his hair more frazzled. Zhenya wants to know what he's been doing, how he's been providing for his family, what job he has now that hockey has been taken away from him. It isn't _fair_.

"This is for you," Zhenya says, shoving the plaque into Coach's hands. He'd looked at dozens of souvenirs, tried to imagine what gift he could possibly give, but this is the one that matters. Zhenya doesn't need something to remember Canada by. He doesn't think he'll ever forget. But Coach gave them this. Coach brought them there through sheer force alone and he deserves it more. 

Coach bites his cigar with the corner of his mouth, ash falling into his lap as he carefully unwraps the towel, laying it out like real wrapping paper over his legs. One old, shaky hand traces over the raised face of the coat of arms gently. Zhenya can hear the tears more than see them. If Coach would have been with them in Canada, there would have been dozens of nights spent over emotional toasts and filled with manly, rib crushing hugs. Zhenya felt everything to his core. Coach felt everything with his whole being. 

"Zhenya," Coach says, barely a wobble in his voice. "I watched, you know." Coach stands, the plaque cradled in his hands. He clears a space over the fireplace, rearranging photos and trophies, and carefully rests the plaque against the wall. He touches the gilded face one more time before sinking back into his seat, finally freeing the cigar from the clutch of his teeth. "I'm proud of you, son."

An echo of his father's words. Zhenya's stomach twists. 

"You are a special boy," Coach says. He reaches up to cup Zhenya's cheek, his rough palm warm against Zhenya's skin. "And a stubborn one. Of all of the boys I've trained, I knew I would never have to worry for you."

"Someone should," Zhenya mumbles. Coach laughs and lets his hand drop. 

"Yes, someone should."

"No matter what you do, you'll succeed." Coach's smile fades, his wrinkled face so old that Zhenya can feel his own age creeping up on him. "You have given me my dream. I will kill men to give you yours. I promise you." 

"What if I can't come home?" Zhenya asks. "What if my dream-" His voice is so small, a thin whisper of sound that even he doesn't recognize. His family, both of blood and sweat, live here at home where everything and everyone is familiar and safe and comforting. But when tries to think of nights without Sidney's strange, endearing laugh or sharp, too smart eyes- When he tries to think of marrying a nice Russian girl and bringing fat babies home to his mother-

"Then we will bring home to you," Coach says. "What's gotten into you?"

Zhenya presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and tries to tamp down the shiny, bright glow he can't help feeling every time he imagines Sidney's smile or silly jokes. Every time he imagines not living under Bobrov's rule, a prisoner inside of his own life and rattling the cage of his own legacy. 

"I wish I never would have gone to Canada," he says. 

"You don't," Coach says, the softness gone. He ashes his cigar off the side of the chair before pointing it up at Zhenya's face. "You've loved every moment of it. I know you, Zhenya." It hurts to be so easily seen through. 

Zhenya _had_ loved every moment- the fancy hotels and the weird ice and Sidney's picks of food and the teenage thrill of sneaking away from his room. But before Canada. he'd had his family and his home and his place in the machine. He'd never even thought of kissing another man. He hadn't lied quite so much. 

"Whatever happened," Coach says, shaking his head, "you are Evgeni Malkin, and you will go down in history. And we will be here." 

_Would you still love me, though?_

Zhenya doesn't stay much longer, walks the frozen path back home with his hands shoved into his pockets and his head down. He counts his steps, thinks about the way the right ice size is suddenly too large, just a little wrong. Three more days.


	15. Chapter 15

Zhenya stuffs his disgusting, soaking equipment into the locker. He's soaked down to the bone with sweat, his legs a little wobbly, and all he wants is to get to a sauna and die in there. The first chance they'd gotten, he, Alex and Artemi had launched themselves at the sauna near the barracks and nearly bolted the door. How Canadians lived without them, he had no idea. 

He pulls on his track pants and a tshirt and makes vague noises in Bryz's direction about meeting him before dinner. The Canadan team should be in Moscow, just a few miles away. The complex has a hotel on site for teams, and if their barracks weren't so close, they would have stayed there, too. Bobrov says it's a kindness, letting them sleep in their own beds. Zhenya would rather be able to sneak up to Sidney's room. 

He leaves his gear in his stall and grabs his bag, the last one out of the room, and nearly runs someone over as he steps into the hallway. He catches his balance and grabs the other person to stabilize them too. The feeling when he pulls back and sees a familiar toothy smile is indescribable. 

"I come with a message," Duper says brightly, like he isn't completely out of place next to the Russian dressing room. Maybe he isn't. He's still their go-between. "Sidney would like to see you after dinner. He'll be at the sports center around eight." 

"Oh." Zhenya doesn't know what he's supposed to say, what he's allowed to say. Duper raises his eyebrows. "Okay. I'll be here."

"Send one of your guys next time," Duper throws over his shoulder as he leaves. Zhenya really wishes they were staying at the hotel, too. 

\---

The rest of the day drags. Zhenya does his lessons and eats his dinner and breaks up a fight between Orly and Kuzy and watches over their new film with the rest of the team. He doesn't look at the clock too often, but he can't hide his escape from Alex. 

"And where are you going at this time of night?" Alex asks from his bed, lazily flicking through a magazine. Half of him is in his bed, half out. He's got to be just as sore as Zhenya is, but he always refuses to admit it. 

"It's seven thirty," Zhenya says, zipping his coat up. He feels like there's something missing, like he's forgetting something important as he pats himself down for keys and wallet. He'll leave the window unlocked just in case, and he doesn't think Alex will lock him out. Probably. "Don't wait up."

"I'd say don't do anything I wouldn't, but I know you're too boring to even get close to my splendor," Alex says, flipping a page. He doesn't look up, but he grins, tooth gap on full display. 

Zhenya doesn't exactly sneak out of the complex, but he avoids the security, closer to the walls than he would have been otherwise. There's a game tomorrow, but Bobrov won't have them on full lock down until after then, when they're supposed to be in real, best form. Zhenya doesn't know if Sidney will want to keep up their new tradition of meeting up after every game, but it's going to be so much harder here. Zhenya can find a way. 

The walk to Luzhniki is only twenty minutes. Zhenya stays away from he main roads, cars and people still outside even though it's gone dark out, and cuts through as many side streets and parks as he can. There is no pretending now. He's not meeting a friend.. He doesn't know what he's doing. 

There is no mistaking him. Even in his puffed brown jacket, Sidney's figure is broad and distinctive, the way he holds himself just the same half the world away. Zhenya's breath catches, frozen in his lungs as he travels down toward the path that leads to the river. Sidney is standing next to a bench, shifting his weight back and forth to keep warm. Zhenya nearly trips over his feet as he tries to get closer.

"Evgeni," Sidney says when Zhenya stops next to him, eyes bright over the shadows under them and smile wide, even with a split lip. Under the night sky, between the orange glow of the street lights, Sidney's skin glows blue. "I missed you."

"Missed you, too." Zhenya wants to hug Sidney, the same as he would with any old friend, but he can't risk it. "Tell me about Sweden." 

Sidney does as Zhenya leads them down the path toward the river. He talks about the plane ride and the arena. He talks about the strong defense of the Swedish team. He talks about the party the Swedes had thrown and nearly getting lost on his way to the airport. Zhenya doesn't say much, just listens to the rise and fall of Sidney's voice. It's strange hearing so much English again after nearly two weeks. He wonders, just a little bitterly, why the Canadians didn't have to learn Russian. 

"The ice is too big," Sidney says, carefully stepping over a patch of ice that's grown through a hole in the walkway. Zhenya laughs.

"No, your ice too little," he says. "Bigger ice, better pass. More room."

"Smaller ice, better skill," Sidney says back. He doesn't quite stick his tongue out, but it's there in the smile he flashes at Zhenya, half hidden in the darkness. Zhenya does stick his tongue out because he's a child and doesn't pretend not to be. 

"You say for self," Zhenya says with an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe Canada just bad at pass." The path splits, the few trees falling away as the river comes into view. It bends around the complex, the shore of it nothing more than some gravel and litter, set not too far away from the sidewalk, but the water is clean and pure. 

"It's beautiful," Sidney says. He breathes the words out, as overwhelmed as Zhenya is. Zhenya looks over his shoulder, back towards where the city breathes, then to the water where no boat dares to tread. They're alone. Completely and totally alone. 

"Sidney," Zhenya says softly. He drags his fingers over the cut of Sidney's jaw, up into the dark curls of his hair. Sidney just stares up at him with those wide, kaleidoscope eyes and waits. Zhenya wants to cut into him. Wants to see Sidney's blood and replace it with his own. They both bleed red and white. They both know the cost of colors too heavy to carry. "I'm miss."

"Yeah," Sidney says, his breath a cloud that curls around Zhenya's wrist. "I got used to having you around all the time."

Zhenya looks over his shoulder again to see nothing but the beauty of the dying trees around Luzhniki, and bends to kiss Sidney. Sidney responds beautifully, his fingers closing around Zhenya's wrist and his chest butting up against Zhenya's and his mouth splitting open. Eternities later, when Sidney pulls away, Zhenya thinks he can see stars in Sidney's eyes. He's turning into a horrific sap.  
"Tell me what you've been up to," Sidney says when Zhenya puts the proper amount of distance between them. They stand near the mostly frozen bank, kicking pebbles onto the thin ice. The streetlights from across the bank make it brighter here that it had been on the path, the city reflected back in wobbly lines. 

Zhenya glosses over practice, but lingers on his family's visit. He skips over the ring in Alex's bag, but talks about the brief glimpse he'd gotten of Tatyana, sleepy and cranky but sweet in his arms. Sidney listens quietly, his eyes too dark to really make out, but held fast on Zhenya's face. Zhenya feels like he's on a stage, under a spotlight like he never is when he's on the ice. 

"Is there good food here, too?" Sidney asks when Zhenya's run out of things to say. The corner of Zhenya's mouth quirks. 

"Yes, but-" He looks toward the general direction of the barracks, so far away that he'd never really be able to see. "Can't- not like in Canada. Need bring more than you and me." There would be too many eyes here, too many spies for Bobrov and people way more important than Bobrov could ever dream to be. In Canada, he had been no one. Here- 

"Dinner party," Sidney says firmly. He thumps his thumb over the back of Zhenya's hand once and smiles, his teeth flashing white in the dark. "I'll get Kris and Flower. You bring some of your guys. We'll go out after the game." 

"Is plan," Zhenya says. It won't be the same at all, but he'll still get some precious time in Sidney's company. He'll still have something. 

They can't walk back hand-in-hand. Zhenya is willing to look sideways at some rules, but there are others that cannot under any circumstances be broken. They can't hold hands, but Sidney stays close to him as they head back to the general direction of the hotel and the barracks. Their shoulders bump, their hips, the backs of their hands. Zhenya feels like a teenager again, walking Eugenia home from school and too afraid to claim her away from other prying eyes. 

The hotel is so much closer. SIdney lingers at the road that will lead him back to Moscow's finest, warm near Zhenya's side. There are exactly two trees leading up the path, both of them mostly dead with the oncoming winter, but they feel like camouflage. A place of coverage and hiding. Sidney tucks his fingers into the belt loops of Zhenya's slacks, still far enough away to be considered polite, and Zhenya can't stand it. He kisses Sidney just once- a touch of lips and nothing more- before pushing him away. 

"Say hi for Flower," Zhenya says. Sidney smiles up at him, full force, and Zhenya can feel himself bleeding inside. 

"And Kris," Sidney says, his tongue poking just briefly between his teeth. 

"No, he's asshole."

"Yeah," Sidney says, his smile softening. "It's why I like him." 

"I'm miss hotel," Zhenya says. He couldn't bring Russia's top beauty back to his room right now, let alone Sidney. It doesn't seem to matter at all to his dick, which is reaching for Sidney in the way his hands can't. Sidney grins, his good boy charm turning wicked for a heartbeat. 

"Soon," Sidney says. He rocks onto his toes and smears a kiss over Zhenya's cheek. A promise. A later. "I'll see you on the ice."

"We win," Zhenya promises. 

"You can try," Sidney returns. Zhenya watches the broad breadth of his back as Sidney makes his way toward the hotel and lets himself sit in the mire of feelings he has no hope of controlling. 

\---

The door to the room slams into the wall as it opens. Zhenya sits up, bracing his back against the wall. He does miss the sheer size of the beds from the Canadian hotels. He hasn't been able to fit into this bed since he was seventeen. Alex stands there for a long moment, the light from the hall turning his face sharp and dark. Zhenya has ten seconds to wonder what pissed him off so mightily before Alex is storming through the room to stand over Zhenya's bed, looming like an omen. 

"I saw you," he says. Zhenya's stomach sinks. He doesn't need to ask. He knows. Someone else _knows_. "Evgeni Vladimirovich Malkin-" His full name, said like a curse instead of like a call home. "I _saw_ you."

"Alex-"

"I thought it was cute," Alex says, leaning forward to brace one hand on the wall, his body a cage with a wide open, baiting slit at the corner. "Zhenya, he went all the way around the world and found himself a new friend. Good. You deserve new friends. And then you _lied_ to me-"

"Alex-" All of his lies had been by omission, trying to avoid this very second, the rage- the stranger- inside of Alex's voice, telling him what he knows is true. 

"You _lied_ to me," Alex hisses, eyes closing. "I should have known something was wrong. You _lied_ , Zhenya. I know you down to your soul. What couldn't you tell me?" 

"I couldn't-" He couldn't tell himself. He couldn't admit it out loud or it would be real. He couldn't tell Alex, because he didn't _know_ -

"And I was there! I was there while you- while you _flirted_ with him, and I thought you were just doing something Canadian." Alex laughs, but it sounds half a second from cracking into glass. He slumps but doesn't move, still braced over Zhenya, who is still crunched up at the top of his bed, unable to move. "Tell me. I need you to tell me now."

"Alex-"

"I said _tell me_." Alex's voice is hard, his free hand opening and clenching in a fist that turns his skin olive to white and back again. 

"He stayed after our first practice to say hi," Zhenya says, staring at the dark wash of Alex's shirt. It's easier. "When I went to get jeans, after we were at the bar, I ran into him on the street and we went to dinner after." He can still smell the pizza, can remember the way Sidney had watched him with uncomplicated, simple eagerness as he took his first bite. "And we didn't stop talking. I know I should have stayed away from him, I _know_ , but he made everything so-" Easy. Special. Meaningful. Bright. Wonderfully, beautifully _strange_. There were too many words to describe Sidney Crosby and not enough time in the world to describe him in a way that would do him justice. 

"Was that, out there, the first time?" Alex asks. His eyes are still, still closed, his heavy eyebrows drawn together. Zhenya can see the way his jaw tics each time he grinds his teeth. 

"No," Zhenya whispers. He thinks about a hotel in Canada that he will never, ever see again and the way Sidney's eyes had been so wide as he'd leaned in, closer and closer. He thinks about a hotel in Canada that he'll never see again and already aches for the way the rug had stung against his arms and the way Sidney had smiled at him like he held the world and David Bowie crooning behind them. 

"Have you slept together?" Alex asks, words clipped. Zhenya could lie, but that's the problem, isn't it? Alex will know, no matter what he says, and there's going to be fallout regardless. Zhenya can only hope to lessen the size of the bomb. 

"Yes," he replies again. He sounds like a child. Like he's broken something valuable and can't find a word large enough to mean _sorry_ the way he wants it to. 

"You have to stop," Alex eventually says. He thumps his hand against the wall, once and then again. "Zhenya, you have to stop. You can't see him off the ice again."

It's the truth. Zhenya knows it's the truth and has known from the first moment Sidney Crosby shook his hand outside in the too warm nightfall. He knew nothing good would come from it, except he hadn't known what _would_ come from it. He tried to imagine his life without Sidney again, gray and normal. A wife, someone pretty with no face who would bear more Malkin children, who one day would play sport or work their hands to the bone or live in the army. A place in politics as a figurehead, just a famous face from years ago there to nod yes or no to the right people without a thought in his head. Maybe his own team, one day, suffering but loved until he made a mistake and couldn't love them again, same as Coach. 

It's coming fast. It will be there for him soon, the series coming to its end and both of them with responsibilities miles and miles away. He will never see Sidney again. Just one week until Sidney is gone forever and it sucks the breath away from him. He hadn't known this was the thing he'd been waiting for and now it was going to leave. A bright ten minutes was better than total dark. He had to believe that.

"Let me have until the end of the series," Zhenya pleads. Let him have just a few more days of happiness before he has to be a proper son and a proper leader and a proper man. Before he has to forget the way Sidney laughs and the way he doesn't ask anything more of Zhenya than his simple existence, and Sidney, Sidney, _Sidney_. 

"You can't." Alex hits the wall again, harder. His face is hard, drawn. Old. Not the boy Zhenya still saw him as, laughing too much and throwing tantrums and wiping blood from his face when the bigger boys got it into their heads to pick on the little kids. He tilts his head, eyes still closed like if he just doesn't look the problem will go away. "You have to stop now. Cut the head off, because if Bobrov catches you-"

"I won't let him-"

"They'll _kill_ you," Alex says, his voice rising. He sinks his fingers into Zhenya's arm, nails biting in. His eyes finally snap open, the blue of them almost gone black. "Do you understand? This isn't meeting some good Canadian girl and bringing her back home, which is bad enough. Zhenechka- Zhenya- he's a _man_. He's the enemy. He's- _Think_."

"Funny, you telling me to think about something," Zhenya snaps, yanking his arm away. Alex leans in closer, their faces close enough to feel breaths, grabbing double fistfulls of Zhenya's shirt. 

"I've been there every time you get something into that stupid fucking head of yours that you can't let go of, and I've pulled you out." Alex shakes him, Zhenya's elbow flailing back against the wall. " _Every_ fucking time. For once, just _listen_ to me before you make a bad decision and _die_ for it. Forget about him. Let me introduce you to Nastya's friends, let me help-"

"You're always telling me to find someone. You're always so far up my ass about not having someone in my life-"

"A _woman_ ," Alex roars, voice rising too loud. Someone will hear them and come running and Zhenya's shame will be laid out bare to anyone who cares to look. "A woman, you fucking idiot. I know you like them! I _know_ you do! Forget these stupid, confused feelings about Sidney fucking Crosby-"

"I can't." Zhenya's voice cracks. His chest feels like there's a snake around it, squeezing tighter and tighter, stealing his air and his thoughts and his everything away from him. His eyes sting as he struggles to breathe. He pushes Alex's hands away again and holds his own up to his face, trying to cover the tears that he can feel sliding down his cheeks, impossible to contain. "I can't. I don't know what to do. Alex-"

Alex falls onto the bed, clutching Zhenya to his chest, and they crash together, too big for this relic of childhood. Zhenya folds in, lets himself be wrapped up in Alex's arms and cries like an infant. He thinks he loves Sidney. It hasn't even been a month, but he can feel it. He knows. His big, stupid emotions have all centered down on Sidney's smile and Sidney's laugh and Sidney's silly sense of humor and _Sidney_. The hole in his chest takes up less space when Sidney is around, and the devastation waiting for him when he's gone might destroy him. 

"We'll figure something out," Alex says softly, his fingers combing through Zhenya's hair, his own eyes wet as they look down onto Zhenya's face. "It'll be okay. We'll figure something out. Let me help you."

Zhenya cries and Alex holds all the shaking, aching places together with brute force and will alone.


	16. Chapter 16

If there is anything that Zhenya knows how to do, it's play hockey. He wakes up, eyes sore and throat dry, and goes down to get breakfast with the rest of the team, Alex next to him like an attachment. He goes through his routine, listens to Bobrov's long speech, and gets through morning practice without saying much of anything himself. Artemi keeps looking at him strangely, circling around him without ever getting close enough to talk to. Zhenya pretends not to see him. 

He's tired, all the way down, eyes still raw even as they suit up for the game. He doesn't listen to what he is sure is Bobrov's best attempt at a rousing speech. He doesn't care. He knows what he's supposed to do, and he's going to have to do. Gonch squeezes his shoulder as he passes through the hall, just once, and Zhenya closes his eyes. Four more games. Just four more games. 

He wishes they didn't have to do all the stupid opening ceremonies. He just wants to play the game and go back to his room. No one in the audience cares about the hospitality rituals or the Canadains' names or anything other than the hockey that's being delayed by tradition. Zhenya shifts from foot to foot, eyes locked on the logo on Carter's chest. 

Olga, in her beautiful regalia and kokoshnik, skates to center ice, loaf of black bread cradled in a towel in her hands. Sidney meets her there, smiling sweetly as he takes it. He nearly trips over his skates when she leans in to kiss his cheek. Zhenya can hear her laughter even over the crowd. The Candians are each given a flower by the women's ice skating team, and then the names are called and then finally, finally, they go to their benches. 

Zhenya gets the puck on the first faceoff and is staring straight into Flower's face within seconds, arms pulling back for the shot when Keith knocks into him chest first and sends him spinning. The Canadians ice it before he even stands back up and he's back to looking at the net, so close he can feel the itch wrists to take a shot. He doesn't get it. 

The Canadians have picked up their speed, running them all around only to shove them into the boards or neatly steal the puck away. Zhenya feels like he's running sprints more than he's playing hockey, his stick barely ever connecting with the puck at all. Even Alex isn't fairing much better, and he makes it known on the bench, baring his teeth at anyone that tries to talk to him. 

It's a long first fifteen, but Bryz keeps them in the game, blocking shot after shot until he just can't. Carter gets the only goal in the first. It isn't even that impressive. 

The Canadians score again, just a few minutes into the second, and suddenly not a single damn man on Zhenya's team can remember how to play the game. They get stuck in their own end for a long, long stretch of minutes. Zhenya, with aching lungs and shaking legs manages to pass it out to Orly, but it doesn't seem to matter at all. 

Sidney gets a goal eight minutes later. He raises his head, eyes straight on Zhenya as his teammates come to shake him up. His smile really is beautiful, even if Zhenya hates the reason. 

The period is almost over when Orly sinks low and drives up into Sidney near the boards, stealing the puck away and slapping it across the ice to Artem. Sidney's skate catches on the ice as he tries to turn and he falls backwards, his bare, helmetless head bouncing off the boards. He doesn't get up. 

"Call it," he shouts from the bench as one of the refs pass by. "Crosby's down! Call it!" He can feel the warmth of Gonch's hand on his shoulder through his pads, the ice of Bobrov's stare. He doesn't care. He can't stop watching where Sidney is lying motionless. Zhenya holds his breath, his hands choking on his stick. 

Slowly, so slowly Sidney gets to his feet. The crowd cheers and Zhenya feels something in him release. Sidney will be fine.

They manage to hold the center, they manage to hold the line, but they can't manage to get a single shot in by the end of the period. The buzzer sounds. Three to zero, going into the third. Canada is running them into the ground. 

"What the hell was that?" Bobrov towers over all of them in the locker room, his eyes furious behind the lenses of his glasses. He raises his hand, too near Zhenya's face for comfort. Zhenya clenches his jaw and waits to be struck but the blow never comes. "What pathetic schoolboy attempts are you making out there? Are any of you paying attention?"

Artemi bows his head, his fingers curled around his saints pendant. Bryz doesn't look at any of them at all. Zhenya wants to scream, but he locks his jaw and waits for the rest of the speech. There are still twenty minutes to play. They could score at least three goals in twenty minutes if they just tried harder, if they just got a little smarter, if, if, if. 

"You will not shame me or this team in front of our country," Bobrov says, voice colder than the ice on the other side of the wall. Zhenya doesn't give a fuck about Bobrov's pride. But they owed Coach. They owed each other. "You will play, and you will win. Am I understood?"

They mumble their yeses and go back to the bench. Twenty minutes to go. 

The first few minutes feel like the last forty. Messy and full of gut hits that leave them breathless. The Canadian fans start chanting, and Zhenya's blood boils. This is _their_ rink. How fucking dare they. 

Artem gets the puck away off a blocked shot on net from Richards and slaps it forward to Kuzy, halfway up the center already. Zhenya holds his breath from the bench as Artemi races to catch up with him before they get to Canada's zone. Kuzy passes all the way across, Seabrook going down before he can stop it. Flower has come out of his net- too far, such a stupid move- and Artemi sinks one home. 

Zhenya doesn't care that Bobrov glares down at him as he cheers. They're in it, he thinks as he jumps in for his shift. They're back in.

Sidney faces off against him. There's a neat row of stitches above his eye, his busted lip from Sweden reopened and bleeding sluggishly, but he's there. He grins as the ref drops the puck and takes off like he'd never been hurt at all. 

Artem steals the puck away from him on a pass and turns, getting them back into Canada's zone just long enough to get two easily blocked off shots on Flower. Zhenya fights off the stick Marchand keeps jabbing into his ribs, but it's enough of a distraction for Carter to swoop in and steal the puck from between Zhenya's feet. Marchand shoves Zhenya into the boards, whole body against Zhenya's back in a way that makes his skin crawl, and then Zhenya can hear the cheering. 

He turns around just in time to see Carter make a long pass up to Sidney, alone in center ice and already racing forward alone. Bryz doesn't even have the chance to move as Sidney throws the perfect wrist shot up and over his head, right into the back of the net. It's a gorgeous goal. It's going to make winning that much harder. Zhenya can't help the confusing feeling of pride in his stomach as Sidney is surrounded by his teammates. 

"Let's fucking do this," Alex says as they skate back to the bench, his eyes sharp on Zhenya's face. Zhenya grins at him and tastes blood. 

The fire has been lit. Zhenya can feel it in all of them, vibrating away inside their bones. It doesn't matter that the Canadians are still chanting for their team. This is the Soviet's building, and they will own it. 

They trap Canada in their own end and stay there. Zhenya butts his heaving chest up against Carter's, blocks him from a pass and kicks the puck away. On his other side, Artemi grabs the puck and rounds back behind the net, his head towards Zhenya but his shoulders towards Alex, who glides backwards and Zhenya can see it before it happens. Alex shoots just off center, but Kuzy is there to tip it in right between the bare bit of space between Flower's skate and the post. 

Kuzy perches himself on one gliding foot and flaps his arms at Kris, grinning the whole way. 

Zhenya takes the next face off and wins, passing back to Kuzy. Kuzy takes off, Alex mirroring him on the other side, and Zhenya doesn't even have time to blink before Alex has given them another goal. Two goals in under fifteen seconds. Four to three with over ten minutes to go. 

The fierce, unstoppable force of Team Canada is slowing down. Even Orly with his clumsy feet is able to make a slick move around Kris, upending him without touching him. They're scrambling more than running plays, finally the ones doing the chasing. Burns and Marchand throw their bodies more than they use their sticks, and there's going to be some hideous bruising on Artemi's side and Vlad's back and Zhenya's own thigh, but it means they're _scared_. They should be. 

Zhenya takes the faceoff and throws backwards. It doesn't matter that Bobrov keeps fucking them over by changing his line. It doesn't matter that Vlad will never be as in sync with him as Alex, because Vlad catches the puck and immediately throws it over to Kuch, who scores with a shot that goes bar down behind Flower's back. Even stone faced Vlad grabs Kuch close for a bare moment. They're tied. They're so close to having the lead. 

They're four shifts away from having the lead. Flower flails in the net with each shot, his defensemen leaving him out to dry. The shift is a mess, frantic, the puck trading back and forth between red and white. Zhenya hits bodies and boards and moves more on instinct than with any plan, but they're in Canada's zone. They just need-

Zhenya slaps the puck between Kris' legs toward Alex and he sees the flashing red before he can register that Alex got it in. They have the lead with five minutes to go. Zhenya wants one more for himself. 

He doesn't get it, but no one else scores either. They've won. They're up three to one in the series. They can do this. 

Zhenya has to shout over the messy excited group of his team on center ice to get them to line up properly. Artemi looks like a little kid, his eyes bright and his smile wide as he hugs Zhenya fast enough to almost not be noticed. Sidney's smile is wide and genuine, nothing like Zhenya's would have been if he'd been on the other side. Sidney is a better sport than he is. 

"Amazing game," Sidney says, squeezing Zhenya's hand tightly. 

"Yes," Zhenya replies, unable to resist sticking his tongue between his teeth. Sidney doesn't give him the full on, head thrown back laugh that Zhenya wants, but Zhenya can hear it in his head anyway. 

\---

The door to the dorm pops open, smacking into the wall with a bang to reveal Kuzy in his best pants and a fluttery green shirt he must have picked up somewhere in Canada. He walks in, head high and hands raised. Flower follows close behind him, Sidney trailing along in the rear. His eyes meet Zhenya's from across the room and the corner of his mouth turns up just a little. 

"Get dressed! We're supposed to be going out!" Kuzy opens Alex's dresser and throws a pair of pants at him. "Zhenya, this was your idea. Come on. I'm starving, and I can't wait to see these idiots drink kvass for the first time." 

"Kuzy-"

"Zhenya," Kuzy replies. "Hurry up. Artemi is already with Kris, and if we leave them alone long enough, their hair will take over the entire country." Alex looks over at Zhenya, jaw tight before he gives one of his big smiles. 

"Zhenya says stomach hurt," he says, stripping off in the middle of the room and pulling on his going out clothes, ignoring Flower's whistle. "Crosby, you boring. You play nurse, and I go drink." Alex reaches behind Zhenya to grab his keys, other hand going tight around Zhenya's bicep. "You have three hours and then he better be gone."

He doesn't give Zhenya time to respond, shouldering past Sidney to throw an arm around both Kuzy and Flower. He shuffles them out the door without another word, kicking it closed behind them. And then it's just Zhenya and Sidney, alone in the place that Zhenya has called home since he was a child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly hockey this chapter. Promise next will be mostly Sid and Geno being Sid and Geno.


	17. Chapter 17

"Hey," Sidney says. He looks out of place in his tight jeans and patterned long sleeve shirt. His eyes move over the room and Zhenya tries to imagine what he's seeing, what he's able to pull from the details of Zhenya's home. 

Neither bed is made, the blankets and sheets tangled up at the foot and Alex's pillow on the floor where it winds up every morning without fail. Zhenya's dresser has two drawers open, clothes spilling out from his mad search for his game briefs. The single photo he has of his whole family sits on top of it, his chubby little cheek pressed to Denis'. The medals he's won dangle off a trio of nails tacked up over his bed, a little cock-eyed and gathering dust. His English homework is still spread out over bed where he'd abandoned it before the game. 

If he'd known Sidney was going to be in here of all places, he would have tried to make it look nicer. More like his room at the hotel with its clean lines and neat order. He would have even hazzard touching Alex's sheets to make that bed, too.

"How is head?" Zhenya takes a step closer, clearing most of the room, trying to block out the mess. He carefully ghosts his fingers over the stitches right at the edge of Sidney's hairline. When Sidney leans into him, Zhenya lets himself touch, tracing the jagged stitching and down over the crest of Sidney's cheek. The skin heats under him, pink rising up over Sidney's nose. 

"It's alright." Sidney smiles, his cheek shifting under Zhenya's palm. "Fine enough for me to still score." Zhenya laughs, more surprise than anything else. They're still standing in the middle of the room and there is nowhere else to sit besides the beds. 

"Let-" Zhenya makes himself move away. He shoves his stray papers into his notebook hastily and pushes the blanket fully to the floor. The sheets are still wrinkled, but thankfully they're clean. He feels like an awkward teenager again with a girl in his room for the first time. A boy. "Sit. Sorry for-" He waves a hand around his room. 

"It's okay," Sidney says with a nervous little laugh. At least Zhenya isn't alone in not knowing what to do. It's different from that hotel in Canada in ways Zhenya can't name. Sidney leans down to untie his sneakers and carefully sets them in front of the dresser before climbing onto the end of Zhenya's bed, back to the wall, one leg tucked under him. 

When Zhenya fits himself next to him, mimicking his position, their knees press together, bony joints digging in. It's grounding. There's a long moment of awkward silence before Zhenya laughs, Sidney following along with him, folding forward. It bursts the tension. 

"I don't know what I'm doing," Sidney says when the laughter dies down. Zhenya snorts. 

"Me too." Zhenya doesn't know what to do, but he knows what he wants to do. He only has three precious hours alone with Sidney. The chance that he'll have this again, that they'll ever be really, truly alone ever again, is so slim that it could be invisible. He wants this, now, while he can have it. "Can I-"

He touches Sidney's face again, unable to keep himself from the hard edge of jaw or the soft place right behind his ear where his hair curls. Sidney's eyes close briefly before he closes the space between them, leaning over their bent legs to kiss him. It feels like the first time again, Zhenya's heart picking up speed in his chest and his hands not-quite shaking as he threads one through Sidney's hair. 

He's not sure if he lays back or if Sidney pushes him back, but he ends up propped against the wall at the head of his bed, Sidney a heavy weight over him. He can't stop pulling at the short curls of Sidney's hair, can't stop himself from closing his teeth around the cut on Sidney's lower lip. It's a slow, long kiss that burns through Zhenya's whole body. He wants to pull Sidney inside of him, can't get him close enough to make it feel right. 

Zhenya manages to slide his hand from Sidney's hair down over his throat, down between their chests where he can feel the buttons of Sidney's shirt. He fumbles at them with bloodless fingers, the angle strange and too close, until Sidney sits back on his heels and does it himself. Sidney drags his shirt from his pants and fights his way out of it, laughing when he gets himself stuck. Zhenya reaches up and helps pull Sidney's arms free from his sleeves. 

Zhenya has seen hundreds of naked men before. He's spent thousands of hours in locker rooms, spent thousands of hours at the sauna, has seen Alex's bare ass more times than he's seen his own. It's never been like this. Sidney's chest is broad and smooth but not completely flat. His pecs are strong, a little swell of muscle that is nothing at all like a woman's breasts but just as enticing. When Zhenya hesitantly strokes his knuckles over one of Sidney's small, flat nipples, Sidney sucks in a raspy breath through his teeth. 

"You, too, eh?" Sidney tugs at the hem of Zhenya's tshirt and Zhenya sits up far enough to let Sidney pull it off. Sidney plants one hand in the center of Zhenya's chest as soon as the shirt has been thrown to the floor, pinning him halfway between the wall and the bed at an awkward angle. Zhenya's breath catches in his throat. 

"Kiss," Zhenya demands, and Sidney listens. He's so warm against Zhenya's, his skin soft and just a little damp under Zhenya's hand. Zhenya traces the curve of his spine, the dimples low on his back, fingertips and palms pushing until Sidney is flat against him, too heavy to be comfortable and too big for Zhenya's childhood bed. 

Zhenya is hard, his cock pushing up under his briefs and tracksuit pants, but it's a dull ache that's easily ignored. He can feel Sidney's own hardness against him, notched right into the slot of his hip. It's strange, nothing like he's felt before during sex. Sex. With Sidney. It's dizzying. There's barely any give to Sidney's sides, his hips, just the press of muscle under his hands. It's nearly terrifying how much Zhenya likes the feel. 

"I want-" Zhenya wants a thousand different things, half-formed thoughts swirling around in his mind and making his head fuzzy. Three hours. Only three hours to know what this can be. "Like you do for me. I want." 

"I'm not going to say no," Sidney says, laughing against Zhenya's jaw like the world hasn't turned upside down. 

There's a mess of falling over each other as they try to stand up, arms and legs tangling and catching. Sidney falls into Zhenya's chest twice, knocking the breath out of him, and Zhenya can't catch it back, too busy laughing to try anything as mundane as breathing. Eventually Sidney does manage to get to his feet, stumbling over Alex's pillow as he reaches for the fly of his pants. 

"You, too," he says again, jutting his chin towards Zhenya as he wiggles his layers off. "Come on."

Zhenya lifts his hips and shoves his track pants and briefs off, kicking them to the end of the bed. He's never been ashamed of his nakedness, has been so used to it since he was ten years old that it stopped mattering, but he wants Sidney to like what he sees. He wants Sidney to be as entranced as he is. Sidney steps out of his pants, shoving them to the side and awkwardly hopping from foot to foot to take off his socks. It's comforting. No matter where he is, Sidney is a strange creature, and it isn't any different here.

It's another shuffle to trade places, Sidney laying flat over Zhenya's bed, one leg stretched across the mattress, one foot on the floor. His thighs are so thick, straining as Sidney shifts to get comfortable, the muscles bunching and releasing as he moves. And between them his cock curves up against his stomach, foreign and new but so inviting that Zhenya feels his own reacting.

"Okay?" Sidney asks. The pink from his cheeks has spread down to his chest, a solid path from point a to point b. 

"Yes," Zhenya says with his dry mouth. He kisses that tender place at the edge of Sidney's jaw, lips dragging down to the vulnerable skin of his throat. 

Zhenya has no idea of what he's doing, but he's always been good at reading people and Sidney is sprawled out like the easiest sort of book. He lets himself take his time, dragging his hands over the plane of Sidney's chest and down over his flat stomach and up again. Sidney's skin is so soft. There's a black purple bruise over his hip that curls over his side, a fading green and yellow mark high up on his collarbone, a raised, jagged pink scar high up on his thigh. 

Zhenya brushes his lips over each one, his hands wrapped around SIdney's biceps to hold him still. He feels like he's halfway to falling apart, nerves and the heavy hang of his cock between his thighs a war inside of him. He wants to tear into Sidney, wants to rut against him like an animal, but more than that he wants to make the best use of his time. There is no need to rush, not yet anyway, and Sidney isn't moving at all, his eyes dark and focused on Zhenya. When Zhenya curiously fits the pad of his thumb over one of Sidney's nipples and presses down, Sidney's Adams's apple bobs. 

The looming task in front of him rests hard and red and thick against Sidney's belly. Zhenya's had his hand around it before, but he doesn't know what to do with it. He thinks he could ask and Sidney would tell him, would be patient as Zhenya fumbles, but Zhenya doesn't want to show weakness here. Sidney had been so confident, so sure of himself, and Zhenya doesn't know how to do anything other than rise to a challenge, even if it's just in his own head. 

He fits himself into the space Sidney's left for him, half of his body hanging off the end of he mattress, and lays his palm flat over Sidney's cock, holding it down against his stomach. It jerks up against his touch and Sidney squeezes his eyes closed for a moment, head tipping back into the corner of the bed. When Zhenya swipes his fingertips over the tip, more curious than anything else, Sidney's knee jerks up, nearly hitting Zhenya in the face. 

"You hurt me, I'm not do," Zhenya says, forcing a stern look until his unstoppable smile breaks through. Sidney laughs again, stomach and cock both jumping, his nose scrunching. Zhenya doesn't think he's ever felt so terrified and light at the same time, has never spent this much time with another person in his bed laughing at him without feeling offended. 

"I won't," Sidney says, his knee knocking against the wall. "I just-" 

He doesn't finish his sentence, but Zhenya knows. They don't have the same language. Zhenya doesn't understand him in full, stumbles over small words he should probably know by now, gets flustered when he stutters. But he thinks they don't need words. Here least of all, where Sidney's whole body is arching toward him, so much strength laid out and made useless by choice. 

Zhenya lays his arms over the stretch of Sidney's thighs, holding them in place. He doesn't have any idea of what he's supposed to do here, but he's been on the receiving end enough times that he should be able to reverse engineer it. He's won a handful of worldwide trophies and medals, has torn his own body apart for Russia time and time again. Making Sidney Crosby feel good should be easy. 

Sidney's skin is salty hot, just a little damp when Zhenya cautiously bends down to lick over the head. When he does it again, Sidney groans, a low sound that makes the heat rise up in Zhenya's belly. Zhenya hooks his thumb around the base, pulling it up from Sidney's stomach and carefully fitting his mouth around the tip. Sidney's hand flies up to Zhenya's hair, not pushing or pulling, just holding on with a loose grip. 

Zhenya doesn't try to do anything fancy, just slides his lips down over the shaft, sucking on his way up, half remembering his own past blowjobs and half letting the twitch of Sidney's body under him lead him. He has to pause, his jaw already starting to go sore, and looks up at Sidney's face, jerking Sidney off with the absence of his mouth. Sidney's cheeks are pink, his mouth as wet as Zhenya's and hanging open, his eyes hooded. Zhenya wants to mess him up so badly he can feel it in every inch of his own skin. 

When Zhenya lowers his mouth back again, a burst of salty precum coating his tongue, Sidney moans again. It's hot, Zhenya never wants to stop hearing it, but if someone comes looking- He reaches up with his free hand and slides two fingertips past Sidney's lips to muffle the sound. Sidney's cock jumps in his mouth and Zhenya can't help his own little groan into Sidney's skin. 

"Evgeni-" Sidney's hand goes tight in Zhenya's hair, pulling hard for the first time. "I'm gonna-" Zhenya tips his head back and watches Sidney's eyes squeeze shut, his throat work as he swallows, his fist till working over Sidney's cock. Sidney does knee him in the chest when he comes, his whole body arching. 

He's so beautiful it hurts to watch him. 

"Come here. Evgeni, come up-" Sidney tucks his hands under Zhenya's arms and hauls him up, too coordinated for Zhenya's pride, but barely coherent. "Put-" Zhenya follows the bossy press of Sidney's hands, gets himself situated between Sidney's thighs, his cock against Sidney's hip. 

Sidney whines as Zhenya fucks up into the crease of his thigh. It has to be too much on his soft cock, has to be overwhelming, but Zhenya can't stop as soon as he starts. He rolls his hips slow and hard, clenching his fists into the sheets. He can only see in fragments- the red, wet smear of Sidney's mouth, the darkness of his eyes, the red of his cheeks and the sweaty curls over his pale forehead. 

"Come on," Sidney says, his nails digging into Zhenya's skin. "Evgeni-"

"Zhenya, my name is Zhenya, you say-" Zhenya's hips stutter, his rhythm thrown by the strength of Sidney's hands guiding him back and forth. He grinds down hard, his full weight on Sidney, but Sidney is solid and strong and can take it easily. 

"Zhenya," Sidney says, and it's wrong, too _French_ , but Sidney says it again and then again, and Zhenya can't help the tightness in his chest, the draw of his balls up to his body. "You have to- it hurts- Zhenya-"

Zhenya bites into the thick muscle of Sidney's shoulder when he comes, his fist pounding against the mattress next to Sidney's head. Sidney makes a hiccuping sound, his chest raising up to meet Zhenya's, like he can feel the endless tug in his own gut. When he's been wrung out, Zhenya falls to the mattress, rolling himself as much as he can toward the wall, the cold a shock to his system. He feels like he's played a full sixty, his chest heaving and his head dizzy and his thighs aching. 

If Zhenya lays on his side, overheated skin against the freezing wall, there's enough room for the two of them on the mattress. Sidney tucks their legs together, his head resting on Zhenya's bicep, and Zhenya lays his other arm across Sidney's hip. He strokes his thumb over that scar, a mindless back and forth as his breathing slows back down. 

"You're amazing, you know?" Sidney says, his fingertips sliding slow and sure down Zhenya's chest, slipping through the sweat. "The first time I saw you play- the video was so bad, but I could tell every time you were on the ice. The way you move-"

"You only like for hockey?" Zhenya asks, only half joking. He combs his fingers through Sidney's sweat damp hair, untangling the knots. 

"It helps," Sidney says, laughing when Zhenya tightens his hold into a headlock, smashing Sidney's face into his shoulder. 

Time moves too fast with Sidney. It always has. Zhenya wants more, wants to find some magic that will stretch these last hours out for just a few more days. A month, maybe. He holds Sidney close, eyes closed, and tries to scratch this memory into himself. One day it will be faded and warped, but for now he can feel every hair tickling under his chin, can feel the rise and fall of Sidney's chest against his side, can feel the cracks in Sidney's lips dragging against his shoulder. 

"Alex be back soon," Zhenya whispers when the clock has run out. Sidney tenses before nodding, pulling away. 

They dress quickly, locker room practice that never really goes away, and Zhenya looks around to see if there's any lingering presence of Sidney in the room that will get him in trouble. He wants something, anything, to be a reminder, but he can't afford to keep anything. 

"You need to go out from here," Zhenya says reluctantly. He jerks the window open, holding it up with one hand. The cold seeps in, stealing away all the warmth that they'd made. He'll keep it open to let the smell of sweat and sex fade with the fresh air. Alex's generosity will only go so far. "Hotel is that way."

"I'm glad we got this," Sidney says as he takes up his place next to Zhenya. He rests his hand on Zhenya's waist and tips up to kiss him, lingering for just a few seconds. "I'll see you in two days. Good luck."

"I'm not need," Zhenya says. Sidney smiles faintly before crawling through the window and back out into the world. Zhenya doesn't watch him walk away. 

He's under his covers when Alex returns, shivering a little, face pressed into his pillow where he can still smell Sidney, can still smell them together. That will fade quickly, too. Alex stumbles a little against his dresser as he kicks off his shoes, wobbly as he throws his coat and clothes into the corner. He doesn't look over at Zhenya, doesn't say anything at all as he falls face first onto his bed and pulls his covers over him. 

Zhenya closes his eyes and breathes in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Final rating bump! We have truly made it and now I no longer have to write because the boys banged with feeling. That's how this goes, right? Goodnight and thanks for all the fish.


	18. Chapter 18

They don't talk about it. 

Zhenya wakes up to a pillow thrown in his face, Alex cackling as Zhenya sputters. Zhenya had been hoping Alex would have the traces of a hangover, something to protect himself against in the too early morning light, but Alex can spend all night in a bottle and wake up chipper. It's another thing that's unfair. 

He tries not to think of Sidney, but he can feel him there through the day. A fresh sore spot on his ribs- not deep enough to bruise but hurt enough to still feel from the knee Sidney had jabbed there-, the words in English class that he shouldn't know, but picked up from Sidney's near endless chatter, the slick puck steal during practice that he'd watched Sidney do in the heat of game, modified for a different body. Somehow, Sidney had worked his way so deep into Zhenya's life without Zhenya even noticing, a sore tooth that couldn't be pulled or fixed, just rotting away with each passing minute. 

He eats and practices and eats again. He studies in the cafeteria, head down and quiet even when Kuzy and Artemi try to badger him into a game of cards. He stays out of his room until he has to. 

Alex doesn't say anything when Zhenya walks in just a few minutes before lights out, but he tells Zhenya what he'd heard secondhand about Sasha from Nastya like a bedtime story. 

The sheets still smell like Sidney. 

\---

"We are ahead in this series," Bobrov says, the heels of his shoes clicking against the floor as he walks path back and forth in front of the team. "And we will keep it that way. We know how they play, and we know their weaknesses. We will not let this opportunity pass us by."

Zhenya's shoulder pads feel heavy, pressing down into skin in a way that he can't stop paying attention to. He's supposed to be their captain. He's supposed to actually raise their spirits in a way Bobrov never, ever will be able to. The way Coach would raise them up into a room of cheering, hungry men ready for the next challenge. But his shoulder pads are too heavy and he can't think of anything past that. 

Zhenya lines up against Sidney for the first faceoff. His heart thuds in his chest, game adrenaline and the little smile Sidney offers him as the referee skates around. Zhenya wants to smile back, wants to be back in his room instead of here with one more countdown, but Zhenya is used to working with what little he's been given. He stares at the referee's hand and goes for the puck. 

The first period is a joke. It's like both teams are dancing in perfect step with each other. Carter shoots- Vlad steals the puck. Sidney makes a long pass- Zhenya catches it on his stick like it was meant for him. Artemi grinds the puck out of a corner- Kris scoops it up. On and on until each minute feels like it's being dragged out for hours. 

The frustration is so thick in the air Zhenya feels like he might choke on it. Bobrov screams on the bench. The Canadian coach screams on the bench. The fans alternate between nearly too loud cheers to nearly too quiet stretches of time where all Zheyna thinks he can hear is his own heavy breathing. 

No one scores.

"What was that?" Bobrov shouts at them, his usually calm face going red under his glasses. Zhenya wants to close his eyes and tune him out, but he watches Bobrov's chin move and does his best to look like he's repentant for not trying hard enough. He had tried. He always does. They all do. Blood out of a stone. Bobrov can't drag any more out of them. 

On the way back to the ice, Bobrov catches Zhenya's arm in his hand, pressure through his jersey that stops Zhenya in his tracks and says, "you will score."

"I'm trying," Zhenya says and jerks away, speeding up to catch up with his team. He doesn't know what punishment that will get him, but he knows it's not going to stop here. Nothing is ever that easy. 

Even Sidney's face looks drawn as he takes his spot at the faceoff dot, his lips pressed together and his jaw tight. Evgeni doesn't let himself linger on the ache in his chest. He has a game to play. 

A minute in, just after Zhenya's gotten back onto the bench, Artem manages to get the puck off the draw and sends it down to Kuch. Artemi is already running towards the Canadian end, just Keith there to block him. The pass hits and Artemi speeds up. His shot goes off the post, but Kuch is there to grab it. He passes it one more time to Artem, who slaps it in hard enough to shatter his stick. Zhenya can feel the bench draw in a breath. 

They're on the board. 

And just like that- just as Zhenya is beginning to feel almost good about it again, like maybe they're going to makes something out of the mess this game has been, Canada scores three goals in just over a minute and a half. Sidney. Carter. Kris. 

"Fuck Canada," Alex hisses as they head out for another fucking faceoff. The whistle keeps blowing every few minutes and the little bit of momentum they're able to generate keeps getting cut off at the head. 

Marchand gets the puck and tries to backtrack it into Canada's zone, but Alex rides him the whole way down the boards, crashing him into the corner, leg already lifted to kick it away. Zhenya is just closing in when Marchand turns, shoving Alex away and throwing a wild punch that knocks Alex's head back. Alex doesn't hesitate, just punches him right back, using his bigger body to trap Marchand against the boards and hit him again and again, Marchand trying uselessly to fight back. 

Then Burns and Kuzy and Carter are there too, jumping in. Zhenya rushes forward to join, grabbing Carter by the arm and hauling him away from Alex just as the referees show up. Carter throws his own wild punch that bounces off Zhenya's helmet and just as Zhenya cocks his fist back, angry and bloodthirsty and more than happy to take it out on Carter's face, he's being pulled back by a linesman. Zhenya spits and Alex swears the whole way to the bench. 

Marchand gets a ten minute misconduct. Alex, somehow, doesn't take a penalty. They're up a man for ten minutes. They have to get one in. They have to tie it now, when it's going to be the easiest shot they get. 

They don't. 

Bobrov is going to make them suffer tomorrow, when he has them all to himself. Zhenya's body aches, his head hurts, his tongue is bleeding from biting it already. He doesn't want to know. He just needs to keep playing, do his job, get a goal before the period is over, before the next period is over. 

It happens in flashes. Alex running down the ice after the puck that's just too far away. Marchand jumping onto the ice from the penalty box just as Alex skates by. Alex's head turning away as Artemi calls to him for a pass. The rise of Marchand's stick. The baseball bat swing, an aim for a homerun. The unnatural bend of Alex's leg as he falls to the ice, shouting the whole way down. 

Zhenya storms ahead, blades chipping at the ice, ready to take Marchand's head off himself. Someone grabs him around the stomach and Zhenya turns into it, elbow held out behind him, stick lost somewhere on the ice. His arm hits solid muscle, but Zhenya is a big man and he's been taught how to fight. Maybe Bobrov had been right all along. 

"Evgeni, stop. Zhenya-" Sidney's voice, right up next to his ear as Zhenya bucks to get him off, desperate in an entirely different way than he had been before. His own name sounds like betrayal. "You can't get yourself thrown out-"

"This how you win?" Zhenya can barely hear his voice over the rage building inside of him. " _This_ how you win?"

"No, fuck, Evgeni-" Sidney locks Zhenya's leg between his, arms so tight around Zhenya's stomach that he can't breathe. If Sidney wants to take him down, he's in the perfect position to do it. " _Stop_. He did that on his own. I'm sorry, Evgeni, you can't get thrown out too-"

Across the ice, Orly throws Marchand down with three quick punches to his face. He follows the little rat down and punches him again and again as Alex stands and falters on what has to be a broken leg. Zhenya can see the clench of his teeth from fifty feet away, can see the way he tests his weight and fails. Alex is their best player. Alex was going to win for the entire goddamn country and bring them their wins and-

"Fuck you," Zhenya spits. 

He twists the leg stuck between Sidney's and knocks him flat on his back. Sidney stares up at him with wide, pleading eyes and Zhenya's chest swells and bursts, his heart in splatters across the ice. He had thought he could have home and Sidney, something good for himself, something that was _his_. But Alex is limping toward the bench, swearing and sweating and shaking as he puts weight on the bad leg and Marchand is spitting in Orly's face, more blood than saliva, and Zhenya will be here for decades past whatever Sidney fucking Crosby could give him. 

Zhenya scores his fucking goal on the power play and stares at Bobrov on the bench, his teeth aching from being clenched. It's the last goal of the period. 

Like a bookend, no one scores in the third.

Canada wins. Three to two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to sequestering for making me flop with glee chapters ago by blind guessing a major injury at the hands of Marchand (someone had to be the bad guy, sorry) and letting me know that the single bit of intentional foreshadowing was working. You have no idea how many times I reread that comment and kicked my heels in joy. 
> 
> Also, hold in there. I swear there's a happy ending.


	19. Chapter 19

The room is too quiet without Alex in it. He won't be back for months. He might not be back until they begin summer training. Zhenya wakes up early and makes Alex's bed, placing the fallen pillow at the head. He carefully packs away the things Alex usually takes home with him and brings it to Gonch's room, dropping it off silently. He wonders if they've already set the bone, if they needed to operate, if Alex will be at the last two games, even just in the stands. If he'll speak to Zhenya at all. 

Breakfast tastes like nothing. The table is quiet. Even Kuzy doesn't laugh or make a joke when Artemi fumbles with the basket of oladyi, sending them halfway across the table. They've lost before. They'll lose again. Not one of them thinks otherwise. Coach didn't teach them to be cocky. But Alex's absence is like a void sucking their spirits away, as tangible as if he were still there. 

Bobrov runs them hard enough that Artemi and Vlad both have to stop to throw up over the boards. Zhenya grits his teeth and focuses on the ache in his legs and lungs, the feel of being checked and hitting back. It's something clear and clean and familiar. He doesn't pull his shots on Bryz or Andrei, doesn't laugh at the spill Artem takes over his own stick, bellyflopping onto the ice. Doesn't look for Alex when he passes. Bobrov wants them to win. Zhenya had been a good part of the machine before and, with a few tweaks, he can be one again. 

Lunch is just as miserable, just as quiet. They're eating for fuel and nothing else. Zhenya isn't surprised when they all break away to their own rooms. Most of them, like Zhenya, will probably sleep until dinner and then sleep some more. Eat, sleep, play. They don't need anything else, other than two more wins. They don't want anything else. Bobrov will grind them into weapons, and they will go to the stone willingly. 

Zhenya watches the night fall through his window, restless in his quiet room. He should be bickering with Alex, complaining about their last game and making plans outside of Bobrov's rigid plays. He should be rolling his eyes at Alex's blow-by-blow recap of his last call from Nastya. He should be hiding the burn in him from Alex's all knowing eyes, should be, should be, should be-

They had been so excited barely two months ago. Zhenya can remember the uproar on the bus, the voices of his brothers drowning Coach out. The sheer rush of disbelief as they'd heard _Canada_. It feels like it's been years instead of months. Zhenya doesn't know that boy that had sit inside that bus anymore. Zhenya doesn't know the man laying sleepless on this bed- still smells like Sidney, and Zhenya loves and hates that all at once. 

Alex should be here. Sasha should be here. 

The window rattles. Zhenya shoots up, the sheets tangled around his legs and his heart beating fast. In the weird memory place in his mind, he's expecting Sasha, or Alex on crutches, swearing a blue storm as he works the warped wood. Instead he just sees a shadow, a dark figure that could be KGB or Bobrov's army or any other person that means him harm. Alex should be here. The window cracks and a figure topples gracelessly inside, tumbling to the floor in a heap of bluejeans and English swearing. 

Sidney. Sidney, a nightmare that Zhenya used to dream about, blinking up at the ceiling from his sprawl on the floor. Sidney, who Zhenya had- who Zhenya does-

"What the fuck?" Zhenya fights his way out of the tangle of his sheets as Sidney stands and dusts himself off, snow still clinging to his body and his cheeks and his eyelashes. Sidney, filling the space where Alex should be. Sidney fucking Crosby, an ocean away from where he belongs. 

For a long second, as soon as Zhenya gets his legs under him and Sidney pulls himself off the floor, there's silence. Two days ago, Sidney had laid in Zhenya's bed. Two days ago, Sidney's bizarre laugh had bounced off the walls. Two days ago, Zhenya had held him close and kept his eyes shut and wished for time to stop. Two days ago feels like miles and years away. A hotel room in Canada. David Bowie on the speakers. Zhenya's stomach turning now, just like it had then, but for reasons so far apart that no measure could name it. 

"Evgeni," Sidney says, quiet, reaching toward him. 

There isn't much room between the beds, and neither one of them are small. Sidney just needs to take one step, maybe two, and then they'll be on top of each other. It would be easy to reach back. To pretend like yesterday never happened. To pretend like they're still Sidney and Zhenya, people instead of cogs. 

Alex should be here. 

"No." Zhenya pulls away from him, his heart somewhere inside of his stomach. His legs bump against his own bed, only years of learning not to be knocked down drilled into him keeping Zhenya on his feet. "You go now. You go."

"Let me-"

"Go," Zhenya says. He's shaking. He can feel it, his hands unsteady and his chest rising and falling too fast. It's the crest between violence and peace, the tipping point between sobbing like a child and getting his pound of flesh. Sidney has to go. 

"Brad did that on his own. I swear to God, none of us thought he would do anything like-" Sidney reaches for him again, his face drawn and tired like Zhenya has never seen it before. Zhenya draws his shoulder back, cornered in his own home. It hurts.

Zhenya is sure the broken bone Alex has hurt more. 

"Go," Zhenya says again. He can't look at Sidney's eyes, his twisted mouth. He should have listened to Alex. He should have listened to himself, all those weeks ago. He should have walked away and left Sidney, pathetic and alone, on some random street in Canada. 

"Zhenya-"

" _No_ ," Zhenya spits. He'd given Sidney that name in a moment of weakness. In a moment of joy. A name for friends and family. A name for a lover. A name for someone he trusted. And Sidney had worked that crooked smile of his, that laugh of his, that effortlessly awkward charm of his and Zhenya had fallen for it, just like he was supposed to. "You not allowed to say. You _cheat_. You _lie_." 

You broke me like Bobrov never could, Zhenya thinks and aches. 

"I didn't." Sidney draws himself up, nearly as tall as Zhenya and almost twice as wide. His jaw sets, stubborn and strong, and he doesn't flinch away from Zhenya's cold stare. "I would have put Brad down myself if I knew he would ever do anything like that."

"Go," Zhenya says. He's so tired. He just wants to crawl into bed, just wants his mother to baby him like she hasn't since he was six years old. Just wants to take a magic potion to forget about the series and Canada and Sidney. "You win here, okay?" It burns coming out. "You change me, you mess with my head, you break Alex. You _win_ , okay? Go."

Silence. Sidney's cold, hard eyes on him, heavy like a boulder in his arms. Heavy and so far removed from the man Zhenya had met a thousand years ago. Sidney, eyes bright as he waited for Zhenya to try pizza and poutine. Sidney, eyes wide as Zhenya kissed him. Sidney, laughing as Zhenya fumbled his clothes off. Sidney, lodged like a splinter under Zhenya's skin, festering and waiting to infect him. Sidney, the distant, cold competitor that he always should have been. Sidney-

"Hit me," Sidney says, voice flat. He shoves at Zhenya once, his palms spread against Zhenya's chest. He presses his lips together, head tilted back to meet Zhenya's eyes. "Come on." He shoves again when Zhenya doesn't move. "You want payback? Come on! Hit me!" 

Zhenya lowers his shoulder and plows it into Sidney's chest, knocking them both to the floor between the beds. Sidney's wider, but Zhenya is on top and has better leverage and rage on his side. He wants to sink his fist into Sidney's jaw, to split Sidney's mouth open and make him hurt the same way Alex is hurt. But he can't- he can't-

Instead he wrestles Sidney to the ground over and over, throwing him back down every time Sidney tries to flip them. He locks his arms under Sidney's and one leg around Sidney's hip, clamping down to keep himself from getting a knee to the dick. Sidney keeps trying, keeps throwing the full power of his lower body against all of Zhenya's weight, almost, almost- and then swears and spits when Zhenya pins him again. 

"Stay down," Zhenya snarls. When Sidney tries again, Zhenya frees one arm and holds it over Sidney's throat, leaning into it. Sidney's eyes are so dark, his face red and freckled and damp with muddied snow trails from his walk over. He draws in a breath, his mouth opening just a little, and Zhenya has to-

Blood. Sidney's lip hasn't healed all the way yet and Zhenya has broken it back open with the scrape of a tooth. Sidney's mouth is warm and wet and kissing him back, mean and kind and _Sidney_ , even in anger. Zhenya closes his thumb and first finger around tender flesh, cradles Sidney's Adam's apple in the basin between them, sick so deep in his own throat that if he so much as breathes nothing but bile will come out. 

"This is your fault," Zhenya hisses, biting into Sidney's lip again. He feels skin break, tastes copper. "You make me feel like this. You make me crazy. You-" Zhenya drops his head to Sidney's shoulder, the fight draining out of him. He's so tired and everything is _wrong_. He misses how easy everything was in Canada. Sidney's hand rests cautiously on the back of Zhenya's head, his fingers gently curling in Zhenya's hair. 

"You make me crazy, too," he says softly. He wraps one arm around Zhenya's back, one leg around Zhenya's thighs. Zhenya can feel the echo of Sidney's heartbeat throughout his own body, rabbit quick jumps that vibrate in his blood. "You make me want-"

Sidney stops himself, and Zhenya can't bring himself to meet those eyes. He _wants_ this body laid out underneath him, strong and hard and undeniably masculine. He _wants_ that sweet laugh and the steady focus of attention. He _wants_ the crooked smile that means Sidney is pleased with him. He _wants_.

He wants Alex snoring across the room from him, safe and sound. He wants the series to be over, with them as the champions. Zhenya has wanted many things over the span of his lifetime. He'll want many more. He's used to being disappointed. It isn't fair, but no one ever promised him fair. 

"You make me want to run away," Sidney eventually says, his face hidden in Zhenya's neck like a child. "I want to play with you and I want to be with you and I want to laugh with you and I want to talk to you every minute I'm awake. I wanted to know you the second I saw you. And I'm not sorry I did it."

"Me too," Zhenya says, despite himself. Sidney has changed him, shaped him into something that doesn't fit anymore. It's uncomfortable and heavy and too much, and Zhenya still wants to bury himself inside of Sidney's body and never leave. 

"Run away with me," Sidney says, his mouth against Zhenya's jaw. 

"You not the kind that runs," Zhenya says back, holding Sidney close to him. Sidney huffs, not a laugh at all. Zhenya sits up, weight on Sidney's thighs. 

"No," he says, his eyes dull but his half smile genuine. "Guess I'm not. We have a few more days. I don't- Please. Let me have a little more time with you. We'll figure something out." 

"Okay," Zhenya says. He kisses Sidney's forehead, the only sort of promise he can give. Sidney's hand catches his, warm and strong and steady. Zhenya holds on.


	20. Chapter 20

There isn't time to be tired or sad. Zhenya drags himself to breakfast and does his best not to think about the hole in his line and the empty spot at the table. No one has given them an update on Alex, but Zhenya doesn't think they'll get one until after the series is over. To keep morale up, he thinks bitterly. Sure. 

He lets Bobrov's speech pass over him as he gears up, his head already out in the rink, trying to remember all the places Canada had gotten the better of them. Bobrov's plays aren't working anymore and it's different actually playing than looking at it from behind the bench. Zhenya is a good playmaker. Coach had always called that one of his biggest strengths. He'll figure something out. 

Four minutes into the first period, Toews opens up the scoring off a set of passes from Sidney and Staal, shooting cleanly on a turn between Artemi's skates as he tries to block it and right through the center of Bryz's pads. Artemi hangs his head on the way to the bench, but Zhenya grabs him and shakes his own back. It was a good shot and they're just getting started. 

It takes six minutes for a goal, but this time it's _theirs_. Burns has been riding Zhenya all game, his ugly beard and wild eyes most of what Zhenya can see at any point in time. Zhenya wants to headbutt him and get it over with, but there's already been enough penalties. Instead, he fakes away from where Neal is hogging the puck and manages to catch it just as Neal tries to get it over to Marchand. He has just a few seconds to throw it up the ice, but Artemi catches it, already running toward the empty center. 

Kieth chases after him, nearly closes in, but Artemi takes a wild shot that flies past Flower, who falls backwards on his ass as he tries to catch it, legs flying up over his head. He'd been way too far out of the net, something Sidney's quietly mentioned before that drives him up the wall, and Zhenya doesn't care. One in for them. 

Like they're working off a timer, nearly exactly six minutes after Zhenya pats Artemi's head it's his turn to run up the ice, Kuzy behind him. His run isn't as smooth, he has to weave his way through Burns- fucking _Burns_ \- and Kieth and Sideny, but he gets ahead just as the puck is crossing into Canada's zone, grabbing it with his stick. He pulls the same fake he did on Burns and nearly fumbles the shot, but it sneaks in just over Flower's shoulder. 

Two in. They can do this. Zhenya will _make_ them do this. He keeps that thought in his mind even when Toews gets his second just a few minutes later, closing out the period like he'd opened it. 

No one scores in the second, but it's not for trying. Bryz slaps away puck after puck, his head up and his eyes sharp as he throws passes onto Artem and Zhenya's sticks instead of stopping the play. On the other end, Flower laughs every time he stops a puck, and if it were anyone else, Zhenya would be overcome with rage. But it's Flower, laughing with the joy of a good block, playing- playing a game. A game they all love. Should love. A _game_.

Bobrov doesn't seem to remember that. For the first time all series, he shouts at them in the locker room, all that cool calm he's been forcing down their throats exploding out until his face is red with rage and even Gonch has gone pale. 

"We win this game, we win the series," Bobrov yells, his voice echoing off the walls loud enough to make Zhenya flinch. "So go win this _fucking game_."

As if it were that easy. As if they weren't _trying_. 

They keep trying. Artem tries by nearly tackling Staal to stop him from sneaking around the net, but it still goes in between Bryz's skate and the post. Artemi tries, scoring a goal from his knees, Kris right behind him and barely managing to leap over him before crashing both of them into the ice. 

Zhenya tries, his lungs aching as he runs from one end of the ice to the other, as he barrels through Carter and fucking _Burns_ and avoids Sidney at all cost. He learned the hard way that hitting Sidney only hurts him in the end and usually ends up with the puck in his own end. He can't avoid Marchand, though, doesn't even want to if he's honest. 

They end up in the corner, Zhenya's knees braced against the board, the puck trapped between his feet. Marchand is a heavy weight against him, his shoulder digging into Zhenya's back and his stick prodding between Zhenya's legs, stabbing at the puck Zhenya can't dig out. Other bodies join them but Zhenya can't afford to pay attention. Either he's got to stall enough to get the play called or manage to get Marchand off his back and get the puck out himself. 

He tries option two first. He has to bend his knees to throw himself back, breath held as someone else in white gets too close, but he feels Marchand topple backward, feels the lurch in his leg as Marchand's knee catches him in the calf, but it's enough time to dig the puck out and send it blindly as far away from the corner as he can. He can only hope one of his guys get it. 

He steps out over Marchand's sprawl, ready to run again, ready to set up in front of the net with Bryz if he has to, but out of the corner of his eye he sees Orly coming the wrong way. Marchand is still on the ice, head down and hands flat and head against the boards. He hesitates just a second, long enough for Carter to pick up the steam puck and head straight toward Bryz, but there's something in his gut telling him to stay and then- 

Orly's leg draws back and Zhenya can see the carnage before it happens. He barrels into Orly himself, knocking him away from Marchand, still on the ice. His eyes are wide for a split second, finally aware of what could have happened, but his face falls back into a sneer seconds later. In the far distance there's a whistle- Bryz must have gloved down the puck, maybe someone scored, maybe anything- but Zhenya can't think of anything but what could have happened. 

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Zhenya shouts as he shoves Orly back toward the bench. 

"Payback for Alex." Orly spits onto the ice, his head turned to where Marchand has finally dragged himself to his feet. Zhenya wants to hurt him too, want to throw his knuckles into Marchand's face until he bleeds, but _kicking_ someone when they're already down-

"We don't play like that," he says, pushing Orly through the door. 

"Just because you're best friends with the Canadians, it doesn't mean we have to be," Orly snarls. It hits Zhenya in the chest, just like it was supposed to. He draws himself up to his full height and tries not to bare his teeth like an animal. 

"Get on," Gonch shouts and Zhenya hurries off the ice. The last thing he needs is to draw a penalty for Orly being a fucking _asshole_. 

Zhenya's just getting back for his next shift, one foot still on the bench, when the goal horn goes off on the wrong end of the ice. Sidney is there, gliding backwards away from where Bryz is facedown, pads sprawled, arms in the air. Kris catches him, ruffling his hair, smile wider than Zhenya's seen it before. It's a cold, sinking feeling, but when Sidney's eyes scan across the ice for him, Zhenya can't help the tangle inside of him at Sidney's smile. 

It's cruel that they were placed half a world apart. 

Zhenya tries to get one more in, tries to set Artemi and Kuzy up, even tries to get a pray and play pass off to Orly, but the last two minutes tick down without another goal. They've lost again, two in a row. They have to win the next game or lose the whole thing. 

Zhenya leads the line for handshakes, Sidney his mirror on the other side. Zhenya's whole body feels heavy as he skates across the ice to meet him. He wants to tell Sidney he's proud, because through some strange sort of wrongness he _is_ , but the words die on his tongue before he even takes Sidney's hand in his own. Would praising Sidney be betrayal? 

"Good game," Sidney says too loudly, shaking Zhenya's hand. He leans in as they skate past each other, his shoulder bumping Zhenya's. "Midnight, your room."

"Yes," Zhenya says, just before he takes Staal's hand into his. He makes his way through the line, head held as high as he can keep it. Kris gives him a long look, but says the right words. At the end of the line, Flower once again takes Zhenya's hands in both of his. 

"You nearly got me a few times," he says, bright with laughter and with his disarming heart-shaped smile. "I look forward to the next game!"

"Me too," Zhenya says, even though it feels like a lead weight over him. He wants to remember what that feeling is like, the thing Flower so clearly feels at all time. Next game- next game, he promises, he'll think of Coach. He'll remember that hockey is a game that has always brought him joy instead of this endless pain. This was supposed to be fun. This was supposed to be a friendly challenge, a promise between countries. Flower squeezes his hand before letting go and Zhenya tries to foist the burden off on him. 

Next game, he thinks as he skates toward the locker room, he'll play for fun. For Coach. For the love of scoring a goal and making a play and the feeling of his brothers around him. For Russia. For the only person he's ever known himself to be. One more game, but it won't be the end of the world. 

He carries that thought into the solemn locker room with him. Tomorrow, he'll do his captain's duties and cheer the boys. Sasha may be gone, Alex may be gone, but Zhenya has known almost all of them since childhood. A heist under Bobrov's nose or a prank on forever long suffering Gonch or any bit of levity his mind can cook up overnight will do. This is their biggest challenge yet. This is what Coach raised them for, trained them for, and Zhenya will not let them go into the last game with heavy hearts. They're _good_. They are world champions time and time over, and they can be that again, win or lose in two days' time. 

In the locker room, he puts his hands on shoulder after shoulder, looks each brother in the eye and tells them sincerely that they're doing their best. That they are champions, that they have never found a fight they couldn't win. He gets some forced smiles, gets some emotional resonance with those that have known him longest, gets dead eyes from Bryz who will suffer the most tomorrow in practice, no matter how well he did.

Zhenya strips off his gear and carefully places it into his stall. The water of the shared shower is cold and steals his breath away, but Zhenya has his goal now. Two days. Two more days until they play the last game with Canada, but it won't be their last game together. They may lose- they _won't_ , he won't let them- but they'd still be family. There will always be a next new biggest challenge on the horizon. They've already proven themselves. 

Zhenya's mood spreads through the rest of the team. They're louder than they have been since Alex went down, the idle plans of card games floating through conversations, dissection of Canada's latest plays an undercurrent that Zhenya only listens to halfheartedly. Four more hours and he'll have Sidney in his bed. He plans to punish and reward for that game stealing goal, plans to feel all of Sidney while he can. They lost and it hurts. He thinks, maybe, even though he was the cause, Sidney might be able to soothe those hurts. 

"Malkin," Bobrov says as Zhenya is pulling on his tracksuit, his voice cutting through the room. Zhenya's whole body goes tight. "A word." 

Zhenya sits in his stall, head down and hands clenched as the team filters through the room around him. Artemi lingers, flitting around Zhenya like he could offer any sort of protection or comfort. Zhenya kicks him on his fourth forced nonchalant dig into his stall and Artemi has the grace to not blatantly look over his shoulder, but his eyes flick towards Bobrov nonetheless. Zhenya mouths _go_ , and he does. 

Alex would have stayed. Alex would have flayed himself, too. For the first time, Zhenya is glad Alex isn't here. 

"Come here," Bobrov says when the room has cleared, even Gonch headed back to the dorms. 

It's just the two of them and everything in Zhenya wants to run. He longs for Coach, for Natalie, as he gets to his feet and goes to the spot Bobrov motions to, just off the hastily painted USSR crest. Zhenya doesn't dare to step on it, even as Bobrov's cold eyes stare down at it. Zhenya stops three steps away, his heart pounding hard in his chest but his head held high. Bobrov can break his body all he wants, put him in the net without padding, demean him in front of the entire team time and time again, but Zhenya won't break again. Not for Bobrov. 

"Oh, Zhenya," Bobrov says, his voice lilting like sick rising up in a throat. "Aren't you the captain of this piss poor team?"

Zhenya's heart pounds. He lifts his chin. Sasha. Alex. Kuzy. Artemi. He speaks for them all, if he wants to or not.

"I've been the captain of the Soviet national team for five years," Zhenya says, leaking as much pride as he can into his voice. Coach trusted him. Coach laid the burden on him at a young age, had snuck Zhenya whiskey and cigars and waxed poetic about the future. "We've always been a good team." _Before you_ goes unsaid, but Zhenya feels like he's thrown it out onto the floor between them like a gauntlet. 

"Five years," Bobrov says idly, fussing with his glasses. He wipes them on the hem of his suit coat before placing them back over his nose. His eyes flash under them, dark and unreadable. "And you've known Crosby for, what, three weeks? Interesting how your loyalties changed so fast."

"I'm loyal to the team and to the Union," Zhenya says, even as everything inside of him freezes. He can hear Alex's voice under the blood rushing through him, pounding in his ears. 

"That's funny to me, Zhenya," Bobrov says, Zhenya's name like a swear in his mouth. Bobrov steps dead center of the painted on logo, just an arms length away from Zhenya. It's a curse, a bad omen, a thing babushkas would swing their fists at. Zhenya can't help the breath he takes in, superstition beaten into him since he was a child. "I would say that a man loyal to the Union would die before he bent over for the enemy, but I suppose you think you're special? Tikhonov was too soft on you. I can see how it might have twisted you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Zhenya says, even as he feels his hands start to shake. Bobrov smiles, a wicked thing that makes every muscle in Zhenya's body tense up. He takes another two steps forward, his chest butting against Zhenya's. 

"I _own_ you," Bobrov hisses, spit hitting Zhenya's face, reaching up to wrap his hand around Zhenya's throat, his palm pressing in against Zhenya's Adam's apple. He's smaller than Zhenya, his body not as honed as it was when he was still playing, but he holds Zhenya's career and life in his hand as easily as he's keeping his hold on Zhenya's air. "You will do as I tell you, or I will let your little dallance out. And I am a well respected man, Malkin." He squeezes again, his nails sinking into Zhenya's skin. "Do you understand?"

Zhenya wants to spit in Bobrov's face but he can't draw in enough air to attempt it. He could break free so easily, he could knock Bobrov to the ground and run, but where would he go? What would be waiting for him if Bobrov told? His politicians would have Zhenya thrown into jail or worse. Alex had been right. 

"I understand," Zhenya chokes out. Bobrov squeezes again, everything going splotched black and white, before letting go. The air Zhenya drags in hurts as much as its absence.


	21. Chapter 21

Zhenya hesitates outside of Artemi and Kuzy's room. His throat has blossomed purple and red, too high up to to be hidden under the collars of anything he owns. He has a half baked idea and a churning in his gut and the ache inside of him to start running and never look back. There's nowhere to run to. Bobrov knows where his parents live, the KGB has the entire country under its thumb. There is nowhere he can run and not be found. He has to choose- noose or whip or terrifying, unknown _other_.

He knocks. 

Artemi answers the door in the middle of a laugh, Kuzy's voice a dull echo behind him. His mess of curly hair runs wild and Zhenya wonders if they'd been wrestling, two children still playing at real adults and shut inside the tiny place they're allowed to call life. Sasha would have loved Artemi if given the chance. Artemi would have been such a sweet, wide-eyed foil for all of Sasha and Alex's plans. 

"Zhenya?" The laughter dies in Artemi's voice as he glances down at the bruising. Zhenya swallows and it hurts. "Zhenya- what happened? Come in- hey, what happened?" 

Artemi has always been both shy and loud, unsure of his place and starry-eyed at the men around him. He has followed Zhenya and Alex around like a tottering child, only speaking up when he couldn't contain himself and then retreating again as soon as he said too much. Zhenya doesn't know him. Zhenya only knows the child. But he knows Kuzy. Has known Kuzy since he was still crying for his mother and clinging onto Alex and Sasha and Zhenya for comfort. 

Zhenya carefully shuts the door behind himself. Kuzy is on his feet in seconds, him and Artemi shoulder to shoulder as they look Zhenya over. Zhenya is supposed to be their captain. Zhenya is supposed to lead them. Zhenya should have their answers. He should, he should, he should- 

"Who did it?" Kuzy asks. Kuzy is laughter and big grins and sly smiles. Kuzy, younger even than Artemi, is pranks pulled in the middle of the night that makes Coach shake his fist at them. Kuzy is what Zhenya was years and years ago, before Coach sat Zhenya down and gave him the responsibility of the captaincy. He's not the shaking, furious ball of rage currently standing before Zhenya, just an arm's width away. 

"Bobrov," Zhenya says, his voice rough. It hurts. Kuzy's hands ball into fists. Even Artemi's forever smile folds into a press of lips that turn his face old. Zhenya stares down at their filthy floor and refuses to meet their eyes. "I need to see Crosby."

"Why?" Artemi asks, bewildered, before Kuzy can spit out what he clearly wants to say. Alex hangs heavy over all of them. Zhenya swallows- pain, pain, so much _pain_ \- and meets Kuzy's eyes. 

"I need to see Crosby," Zhenya says again, jaw clenched and eyes trained on the crooked nose he'd wiped as a teenager. His head is already on the block. The only thing they can do to him now is stretch his throat wider. He hopes they won't. "I need cover if anyone goes looking for me." If Bobrov goes looking for him. 

"What're you planning?" Kuzy asks. It's the same question he's asked to Alex and Sasha a hundred times over, but there's suspicion instead of eagerness. Zhenya's stomach knots. 

"I can't tell you," he says. He can't let them know. If they know, their heads will roll, too. He can't let anyone know. "Just cover for me." Kuzy's jaw tics, his eyes narrowed and dark as they stare down at the bruising. 

"Check in when you get back," he eventually says. Zhenya feels a speck of relief. "I'm going through your stuff while I babysit your room." Zhenya's lips twitch. It's as much of a smile that he can muster up. 

Zhenya lets them into his room and climbs out the window before he can give any mind to the way they'd looked over at Alex's bed together like one unit. He hunches down, jacket collar around his face and hat pulled low over his forehead. The stars are too light to see but the moon is full and bright above him. The cold seeps in as he makes his way to the hotel, stinging as he breathes in. He has the passing thought that it's going to affect him tomorrow, that Bobrov fucked him over again. 

Zhenya doesn't look at anyone as he makes his way across the lobby to the elevator. The people here know him and he can't let word get back to Bobrov. He takes a deep breath, slow. He hopes Sidney's room number hasn't changed, hopes Duper told him the truth about Sidney's requirements. Zhenya goes up to the fourth floor.

He keeps his head down as he makes his way down the hall, walking quickly. If he sees Marchand, he doesn't know if he'll be able to stop himself from returning the favor. If the other Canadians see him- well. That's what he'll have to find out later. Maybe. 

Sidney answers on the second knock. He startles when Zhenya pushes in past him but gamely closes the door, leaning back against it with his bare shoulders. He smiles, eyes crinkled at the corners and mouth crooked, full display on. He's in his underwear and happy, fresh off a win and maybe pleased with Zhenya's presence. It would be so easy to pretend this is just a drop-in to get his hands onto Sidney, to spend their time together. He could forget everything outside of the walls around them and lose himself. 

"Hey," Sidney says brightly, pushing off the door and stepping into Zhenya's space. "Couldn't wait?" He's warm, the skin over his hip blood hot when Zhenya places a hand there. It would be so easy. Zhenya closes his eyes and leans his forehead against Sidney's. He can't pretend. He isn't a child anymore. "Zhenya?"

Zhenya curls his fingers around the broad span of Sidney's palm and slowly brings it to the zipper of his jacket, eyes closed. He can feel Sidney's eyebrows come together before Sidney moves away. Sidney pulls the zipper down, the sound so loud between them. Sidney's hands are gentle as they push the jacket off, tugging the sleeves over Zhenya's hands and letting it drop to the floor. Zhenya flinches at the hitched breath he feels more than hears.

"What happened?" Sidney's fingertips bleed heat as they hover just next to Zhenya's throat. "Evgeni, what happened?"

"Bobrov knows," he says. When he opens his eyes, Sidney is ashen, his mouth half open. Zhenya's chest is too tight. Bobrov _knows_. Zhenya is going to belong to him until one of them dies. He can't breathe. 

Sidney leads Zhenya to the bed, hands careful as he guides Zhenya down onto it. Zhenya drops his head into his hands, drawing in big, deep breaths to calm the panic rising inside of him. He can't _breathe_. Sidney sits next to him, the mattress dipping enough to lean Zhenya toward him. Sidney's warm, strong hand curls around his, both safety and the most dangerous thing Zhenya knows. 

"It doesn't matter," Sidney says, his voice firm. "I'm gone in four days. I-" Sidney's voice falters, his hand turning so he can link their fingers. Zhenya stares at the bend of Sidney's knee, the dark hair over pale skin, the leg of Sidney's plaid underwear just at the corner of his eye. Four days left. Sidney will probably never set foot in Russia again. "I'll be gone. What can he do to you?"

"Put me in jail," Zhenya says. He swallows and flinches. Sidney's hand tightens around his. Zhenya thinks of Alex yelling at him, hovering over his bed like an angry omen. "Kill me."

"They wouldn't-"

"This not Canada," Zhenya says, the snap of his words lessened by the roughness of his voice. He runs his thumb over the puffed span of Sidney's knuckles. "I'm- Here, sports is like war, you know? We win, we show whole world how good we are. Strong. Important." He stumbles over the middle syllable, but Sidney doesn't say anything. "This my job. But is-" Zhenya squeezes Sidney's hand without thinking about it, probably too hard, but Sidney doesn't even flinch. He takes a deep breath, tries to steady himself. "When I'm done, I'm probably politic guy. I'm sports hero, you know?" It feels like heresy to compliment himself, but he knows how good he is, knows that his only real competition in the entire country is probably on bed rest and wearing a cast. "I can say many things, but it's just my face that mean anything. If Bobrov tell, I'm big-"

Zhenya falters for a word in English. He has plenty in Russian. Disappointment. Failure. Abomination. Scandal. Shameful son. Not Russia's son at all. Enemy of the Soviet way of life. He doesn't know how to explain any of that. Even if Bobrov didn't give him a death sentence, even if Bobrov didn't send him to be locked away for sodomy, his life would be over. He would never play hockey again. He might not have a home to go back to. He might not have a home at all. Even a life in the mills was better than what would be in store for him. 

"Bad," Zhenya eventually lands on. "I'm bad. Whole country know. I'm die. Body or inside, I'm _die_ , Sidney." 

There's wet on his cheeks that Zhenya can't hold back. He's always felt too much, too deeply. He loves Russia. He loves the people and their history and everything about it. He _loves_ his home, has handed his body and mind over to it time and time again. He doesn't think it will win him the support of his countrymen. Not if he's- not if he's in love with a man. A foreign man. An enemy. 

And that's what this is, he thinks. It's too soon to tell. He doesn't know everything about Sidney. He only knows him in a few dozen stolen hours and from across the ice, but he knows himself well enough. He knows what Sidney does to his insides, how different he is with just the thought of Sidney's presence. _Love_ , the way Alex goes weak anytime he speaks of Nastya. _Love_ , the way Zhenya's entire body calls for Sidney's. _Love_ , the way that even the threat of prison or death can't keep him away from Sidney. 

Sidney cups Zhenya's cheek with his free hand and then Zhenya is on the soft mattress, Sidney a heavy weight over him, anchoring him down. He wraps his arms around Sidney's solid bulk too tightly, presses his face into the hard muscle of Sidney's shoulder. 

"Take me with you," Zhenya whispers. He swallows, his sore throat protesting. It tips something fundamental out of him to even think of asking. He'll forgo fame and fortune and even hockey itself if he has to. He can't let Bobrov win. He won't let Bobrov win, even if it means turning his back on everything he knows. 

Sidney might not be the kind that runs, but Zhenya is weak. There is no other way he can think of. Either he runs to a new country, a new and unfamiliar life with no idea of where he'll end up, or he'll die at home. There isn't a choice, but Zhenya still feels it like he's been shot, his whole heart bleeding onto Sidney's hotel bed. If Bobrov even breathes a word-

"We need- I need to get Duper. He can help. We'll figure something out." Sidney's voice is like another weight on Zhenya's chest, another thing anchoring him down. 

" _No_ ," Zhenya hisses. He can't let the enemy have ammunition on him, and he's never trusted Duper farther than he could throw him. "He can't-"

"He knows about me," Sidney says softly, his breath warm against Zhenya's temple. Sidney curls his fingers in Zhenya's hair, no pressure at all, just hanging on. "He's known about me for a long time. So do Flower and Kris. I trust them."

"You the captain, Sidney. They know you." Zhenya had liked Flower and Kris, but he didn't know them. He didn't know if they were more Sidney or more Marchand, if they would use this against them, if they would find a way to do something terrible to him to protect Sidney out of loyalty. 

"I trust them with you," Sidney says. He carefully sits up, heavy over Zhenya's lap, his mouth drawn into a tight line. "They'll help. I swear, they'll help. Duper has more access to the Soviet team. He's got all the information for our travel arrangements." Zhenya's heart thuds in his chest too fast, but the tears have dried. Sidney kisses him once on each cheek, a slow drag of his lips that reminds Zhenya of being a frightened child. "Let me get him."

The bed is immediately cold when Sidney stands up. Zhenya curls himself up against the headboard and watches Sidney pull on a pair of shorts and a tshirt. He grabs his key and leaves the room barefoot, his shoulders pulled back and head high. Sidney Crosby could move a mountain if he wanted to, Zhenya reminds himself. This should be nothing compared to that. 

Zhenya doesn't move from his spot. He has to leave soon, can't ask Kuzy and Artemi to watch his room for him all night. He hopes they're still there, hopes they won't ask too many questions when he gets back. He's never been a good liar, and Kuzy knows all his tells. He can't afford to put them off, can't afford to create tension through the last game, can't give away his plan, whatever that ends up being.

He thinks himself in panicked spirals until the door clicks open. His whole body tenses up, but it's just Sidney. Duper follows along behind him in a stretched, faded shirt and sleep pants. His hair stands on end, pillow creases still red over his cheek, and it would be funny if Zhenya could find it in himself to laugh. 

"Hey." Duper places a careful hand on Zhenya's shoulder, warm and so much like the familiar weight of Gonch's touch that Zhenya can feel the build of tears behind his eyes again. The toothy smile Zhenya has come to know him by is absent, replaced by a grim faced stranger. "I'm going to help you, okay? We're going to help."

Zhenya flinches when Sidney sits next to him, his eyes narrowed as Duper takes his own seat across the room in a chair. To his credit, Duper doesn't make or face or a comment when Sidney carefully takes Zhenya's hand. It's unnerving to be so openly intimate with him where someone will see, but Sidney is warm and steady and takes Zhenya's weight when Zhenya leans on him. 

Duper asks questions and Zhenya answers. When he can't, Sidney fills in for him. They go over his day, who he trusts most, what he knows of Bobrov's schedule away from them. When the questions fade, it feels like Duper knows him better than his own mother. It's exhausting and Zhenya still has the walk back to get through. He hopes he doesn't pass out somewhere on the way.

"I have a plan," Duper eventually says, his face tilted up and his mouth twisted at the corner. "You're not going to like it, and Mario definitely isn't going to like it, but I think we can pull it off. I just have to arrange some things."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters to go! We are in the home stretch folks!


	22. Chapter 22

Zhenya doesn't explain himself. Zhenya offers nothing at all to Kuzy or Artemi when he stumbles back into his room, exhausted and drained. Thankfully, neither of them asks anything from him as they filter back into the hallway, their eyes as dark as Zhenya imagines his own to be. It's going on two in the morning and he's asked too much of them. 

Morning call is too early. Zhenya pushes food into his mouth, tasteless and too hard against the soft insides, and tries not to think about anything farther away than the next minute. He wants to lead one last rebellion, wants to be with Artemi and Kuzy and Artem and Bryz, one last hurrah, one last prank, one last show of brotherhood, but he's so bone tired that even dragging on his pads for practice feels like climbing a mountain naked. 

He forces himself through practice, eyes down whenever Bobrov is on the ice. He can feel his team's eyes on him, looking for their leader, for their rock, but he can't be that for them. Not today, when they can all see the purple black collar around his throat, not when it still hurts to breathe let alone speak. Bobrov has damned them from the start. 

"Mail," Artem says placidly after practice is over, handing Zhenya a still sealed envelope as they move into the locker room. Zhenya hides it in his stall until he's showered and changed and back on his way to the dorms. 

He doesn't dare break the seal until he's back in his room. 

Reading English has always been easier than speaking it. Zhenya can read well, understands the carefully penned block letters on the first read through. He still checks his dictionary just to be sure, translates the letter into Russian on the back of one of his homework assignments before burning both pieces of paper in the empty trash can of his empty room. 

\---

The air in the arena is heavy, thick in a way it hasn't been for the last games. Zhenya can feel it pressing down on all of them, all the weight of the last months ready to be tipped here, one final game that meant more than any of the others had. Zhenya stared up into the crowd, felt the rush of their pure _want_ , the same as his. The same as the team's. The icy air hurt to breathe in, his throat still raw, but Zhenya's head cleared. What happened later would happen. For now, he had a game to play. 

Sidney's eyes met his over the ref's hand for the first puck drop. He gave Zhenya a tight, determined smile, and Zhenya couldn't help return it. If this was the last game he ever got to play, he was going to put his whole body into it. He'd leave something important behind. 

The penalties come fast, the whistles blowing as elbows are flung and sticks become too friendly. It isn't going to be an easy game at all, the desperation on both ends violent. Zhenya lands his hits harder, throws his shoulder harder, _works_ harder. They get a five on three barely five minutes into the game, ice so wide open that it would be insulting to pass up. 

Kris, Thornton and Richards make a triangle of their bodies, hovering in front of Flower, heads up and sticks down, but they're outnumbered so easily. The puck bounces from Zhenya to Artemi to Orly and back again, their bodies moving just enough this way, just enough- as soon as he's in Alex's favorite spot, as soon as he has the chance, Zhenya slaps the puck into the back of the next, the edge grazing just over Flower's blocker. 

It's a good start. 

It feels like an echo of the first game between the start and stop of the whistles and the races in between. Artem's line gets stuck on the wrong side, their passes getting scooped up, none of them free for a change and their bodies slowing down. Sidney, fresh from the bench, knocks the puck far enough forward that he can shuffle it between his skates and kick it toward Carter, who throws it off to Kris set at the top of the circle. Bryz goes down to block it, but Toews is right there and catches the rebound, tucking it neatly in around Bryz's skate. 

Third goal, their goal- Zhenya sidesteps Richards and gets the puck to Kuzy at the top and Richards against his side. Kuzy blind passes to Artemi who threads an impossible needle between Flower's flying arm and the posts. Zhenya barely feels Artemi under his hands when he goes to shake him, more routine than joy. They still have so far to go. 

Zhenya tries to catch his breath each time he steps out off the ice, starts praying for Arem's line to stay out just a little longer, just enough for Zhenya's lungs to stop hurting. Everything has gone pale and shades of red and white and black, his whole mind here and now and ready, even if his throat keeps burning on every inhale. 

Canada ties them before they go into the second, but it doesn't matter. Not even a minute into the second, Artemi flies off toward Flower, Kieth not fast enough to catch him or the puck. He shoots right off the blue line, too high, and the puck bounces off the mesh, back onto the ice, guided by some magical force right onto Kuzy's stick. Flower doesn't even see it coming, his back turned the wrong way, and Zhenya nearly laughs at the way Kieth's face falls. 

They hold the lead for ten minutes, setting up time and time again in Canada's zone, the undefeated team they had always been, a working machine with only Flower as the grinding, broken gear stopping them from getting another one in. Staal eventually manages to break free of their hold, sneaks behind Orly for a dirty screen that leaves Bryz blind and sinks in another to tie the game again, for one whole minute. 

Zhenya lines up across from Sidney, both of their faces red and hot and drenched with sweat. Sidney's hair sticks to his forehead, his curls wild at the back of his head where they're not plastered down. Sidney doesn't smile this time, his lips pursed and his eyes on the puck. He's a heartbeat too slow and Zhenya snaps the puck to Artemi, who takes three zigzagging steps before shooting it in point blank between Flower's pads. 

Artem gets another goal before the period is out. Two goal lead. Twenty minutes not to screw the whole thing up, twenty minutes until everything is blessedly, thankfully, finally _over_. 

Things fall apart early in the third period and don't get better. Towes cuts the lead with a goal basically handed to him by Kuch, Bryz and Orly all falling over each other at the front of the net. Whatever Sidney or the coach said to them has removed that desperation, and every time Zhenya even thinks of breathing he has a Canadian on him, forcing him to retreat, and someone's always bodyguarding Artemi, cutting his pass chances in half. 

Artem doesn't fare much better, constantly losing the puck and grabbing it again only for it to be stolen again. It's exhausting, grueling work to gain inches and Zhenya's heartbeat throbs in his ears and his throat, his head dizzy from looking to the clock every chance he gets. They have a goal lead and half a period to get more, but Neal gets one in behind Bryz's back and Zhenya's stomach riots. 

The minutes tick by, hours in the span of seconds, each one circling the drain without a goal from either side. Zhenya can't stop watching the clock, can't help the taste of acid and blood in his mouth, can't breathe properly anymore, but it doesn't matter because they're ten, five, four, three minutes away, and he just has to hold this team together for a little longer, has to push someone to get the goal he can't seem to find. 

They just have to keep the game tied, just a minute longer. They have more goals, they'll be the series winners if they just tie the game, and it's not the way Zhenya wants the series to end, but they'll have _won_. Everything will have been worth it- Coach, Bobrov, _everything_. 

Zhenya throws himself into Burns as they cross into the USSR end, knocks the puck as far away as he can. Just as he's turning to follow, he sees Sidney scramble for it, edge catching and sending him drifting to the boards, but his stick just hits it over enough to connect with Carter. Zhenya nearly goes down himself over a tangle with Burns on his way to the net, to where Sidney is up again, no one paying attention to him at all, which is _stupid_ and Zhenya tries to call out for Orly to just _turn the fuck around_.

Carter's eyes are forward on Bryz but he shoots the puck to the left. Bryz doesn't even see the shot from Sidney coming. The goal horn goes off and Zhenya can hear the sounds of people already singing _O, Canada_. They have thirty seconds to score another goal, to tie again, to have any hope whatsoever of being the winners, they just have to get one more-

They don't. 

There is a hurricane inside of Zhenya just waiting to be let out. He failed his team. He failed Coach. If he wouldn't have been distracted, if Alex would have been there, if, if _if_ \- Zhenya had needed one more win, something for his country to remember him by, a legacy his father could be proud of even if he couldn't be proud of his son. A reward for Coach, a payment for raising Zhenya into a man, a promise to his brothers that they could and would live on without him and still be strong. 

He had failed them all, but there was nothing else he could do about it. He had tried- God help him, he had put his entire being out onto the ice- but he had failed. He only hopes they can forgive him in time. 

"Twenty minutes," Sidney says in the handshake line, his hand warm and damp against Zhenya's, head leaned in close. The crowd is still screaming, as much cheer as ill will, and it's hard to hear him. Zhenya's heart runs wild in his chest, adrenaline and terror and grief all fighting for a top spot. He's afraid it might explode and end everything too early. Sidney's hand goes tight around his, his cheek brushing against Zhenya's for the briefest of moments. "There's a starman waiting in the skies."

"He told us not to blow it," Zhenya breathes back, hand falling away from Sidney's. 

He takes in Burns and Marchand and Carter and Toews and Kris in turns, his mouth moving but his head so far away that he doesn't know if he's saying the right words. At the end of the line, Flower takes one hand in both of his, his forever earnest face stone hard and smile darkened despite his win. 

"We will win, friend," he says, eyes staring straight through Zhenya into the deepest parts of him. "I will see you soon."

The locker room is somber, everyone silent as they take their gear off. Bobrov's rage is just around the corner, heavy as an impending storm, and it doesn't matter that they aren't his team anymore. He promised them punishment if they lost, and not a single one of them doubts that somehow it'll find them. Zhenya can only pray that Bobrov doesn't coach them again, that their teams will have a better leader. He can only pray to move fast enough to avoid Bobrov at all. 

He gets a few confused, tired looks as he hurries through stripping off his gear, shoving it into his bag and pulling on his dark street clothes over his sweat sticky skin. No one says anything and Zhenya hopes they assume it's his usual emotional outburst. _That Zhenya, the one with too many feelings, off to lick his wounds in private._ He wonders which one will be the first to go to his room, who will notice that he's actually gone. 

It's not a thing he has time for, not a thing he can waste time on. He leaves his gear bag in his stall, zipped and ready for transport to wherever it might end up and pulls on his coat. Everything he needs is inside his jacket, a hastily sewn pocket holding his passport and every last cent he could get his hands on, the official documents he owns carefully folded. The photograph of his family that he couldn't bear to leave behind. 

Zhenya lets himself have one more look at his team- tired and defeated and silent- and leaves. 

The area around the complex is filled with people filtering out through the gates, voices loud and raucous. Zhenya pulls his scarf high over his nose, breathing in his recycled breaths, and hunches down as much as he can. It's impossible to mistake him- he's too tall, too wide at the top and too narrow at the bottom- but there's so many people around that he should be able to get by unless someone's already looking for him. As long as he isn't recognized.

He follows the herd to the parking lot, his blood rushing through his ears, his body aching from the abrupt shift in temperature. He walks all the way to the back of the lot, farthest away from the light of the complex, to the gray car with a Canadian flag sticker on the edge of the bumper. The light doesn't reach into the car at all, night closing around everything.

Zhenya takes a breath and opens the door, sliding into the passenger seat. Sidney starts the motor and they begin their long drive away from Moscow. It's going to be a long week, a terrifying week he doesn't still understand all of, but at the end- at the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I almost wanted to end it here before the last chapter snuck up on me. A few more days of polishing, and we will be at the end for real my friends.


	23. Epilogue

There is a dream here. 

Zhenya is both in America and Russia. He has a foot on one side and a foot on the other, straddling an entire ocean between his legs and his mind. Canada isn't so far away, not compared to Moscow, to Metallurg, but it's still dozens of hours by car. Zhenya has seen three places in America, four in Canada, and dozens of others in Europe and Asia. A thousand in Russia, from each deficit line and tired old babushka face and each slick politician that wanted him to smile and nod. 

But here, in this middle place of belonging and not belonging, somewhere he has lived his whole life, there is a dream that he refuses to wake up from. 

It's in the way Sidney wakes up too early in the morning, in his bright, squinted eyes turned towards Zhenya and his crooked smile that Zhenya never stood a chance against. It's in the way Sidney laughs when Zhenya rolls over on top of him, still sleep heavy and unwilling to face another day. It's in the way Sidney's hands cup over his shoulder and cheek, rough and gentle at the same time, familiar and still from a foreign country. A foreign language that Zhenya understands without the uselessness of words. 

The fear hasn't faded over the whirl of year Zhenya's been playing living shadow for Sidney, following him from country to country and letting him work his charm and work the mind for politics Zhenya never had, working harder even than Zhenya to find him the right place. The right life. Mario has already been sent vaguely threatening letters. Zhenya has already been sent letters of his own, tearful and betrayed and pleading. He keeps them, tucked under the bed in what is technically Sidney's house but has been part his just as long. Alex hasn't written. Zhenya doesn't know if it's for better or worse. 

The quiet is still jarring. He expects to have a kitchen full of team every time he goes downstairs for breakfast, or to have someone throw something at him if he takes too long in the shower. He misses the noise of his team around him, the living proof of everyone being right where he left them, but he doesn't mind the sounds of just Sidney. Usually.

"Wake up," Sidney says softly, his thumb ghosting over the curve just below Zhenya's closed eye. "We have a game."

"No," Zhenya mumbles, his mouth against the warmth of Sidney's shoulder. Zhenya burns hot. Sidney burns cold. Together, they make a sweat mess of their blankets and Zhenya kicks and Sidney steals covers and both of them cling too tight to be comfortable. "Sleep."

"No sleep," Sidney says, laughing like he's clever. Zhenya cracks open an eye, mouth pinched. Sidney still speaks in that careful way, like he did an ocean and eons ago, slow enough for Zhenya to understand but not once condescending. Zhenya tries to mimic that pace when Sidney haltingly speaks the Russian Zhenya has taught to him, word by word. It doesn't matter the tongue, they're already fluent in each other. 

Fluent, the way Sidney laughs again, that honk Zhenya fell in love with in a Pizza Hut. Fluent, the way Sidney locks his calves around Zhenya's thighs and flips them over easily, his grin a comfort as he sits over Zhenya's stomach with all of his weight and pins him down. Fluent, the way Zhenya doesn't even try to fight him as Sidney leans down and kisses Zhenya until neither of them can breathe. 

In English, the words _fluent_ and _free_ are different. In Russian, they're the same, just given different endings. A different case for different meanings. He is fluent for, with, by, about Sidney. He is comfortable for, with, by, about Sidney. It's terrifying. It's freeing. 

"You have to get up," Sidney says, his lips ghosting over Zhenya's. "Hockey, Zhenya. _Hockey._ "

He still says it wrong, probably always will, but the flat of Sidney's Z has become its own special thing. He hasn't figured out a name for Sidney, something for just the two of them, but he doesn't think he has to. Sidney hovers, orbits around Zhenya now that they don't have to be so discreet. Zhenya will never reach for him in public- America is kinder than home, Canada is kinder still- but they're still two men. There isn't space for them outside of the team that has folded Zhenya into it seamlessly, isn't space for them outside of each other, but there doesn't need to be. 

Zhenya makes the coffee and Sidney drives them over the bridge that still takes Zhenya's breath away, and Kris and Flower meet them at the arena with matching grins that don't mean well for anyone. Sullivan isn't Coach- no one will ever be Coach- but he's a fair man that looks at Zhenya and sees uncomplicated potential. He hasn't known Zhenya since he was a child, but he doesn't think of Zhenya as a gear. He asks questions sometimes, Sidney nearby to translate to the best of his ability but otherwise silent. 

Olli, a nice Finnish kid, is not like Artemi at all. But he skates close to Zhenya and Sidney, eyes wide everytime they take the ice. He's quiet but smart, all wide eyes every time he poorly covers for whatever prank Flower is pulling. Flower isn't Sasha, will never be Sasha, but he laughs just as loudly and is always there, one hand in the cookie jar with a smile that wouldn't melt butter. Sidney isn't Alex, doesn't know Zhenya down to his soul, but he wants to. 

There is a dream here, but there is also a home. A place being built from the ground up. Kris and Flower now, Mario, the terrifying man who clearly thinks of Sidney as his son, knows. Bobrov still knows. It's terrifying and- freeing. 

"Me last," Zhenya says, hours and hours later, as they line up to head out onto the ice. He can hear the crowd already shouting the house down. He can feel the vibration of their feet pounding the stands underneath the blades of his skates. He's in Penguins black and gold, as far from Russian red and white as he can get, but the thrum of the next big challenge is under his skin as familiar as breathing. "I'm more years big." 

Sidney looks up at him with those big, sharp eyes, his mouth twisting in that crooked fishhook smile that yanked Zhenya out of the water a lifetime ago, and takes his place two paces ahead. Zhenya follows him into the stadium filled with people shouting and cheering for them and thinks of Alex and Kuzy and Artemi. Thinks of Gonch and Natalie and Coach. He thinks of his mother and father. He'll see them again some day. Family never goes away, even if it might take some time for them to forgive him.

But here, under the bright lights with Sidney standing next to him- this is where he belongs. He's still part of a machine, still born and bred to score goals and win trophies and make history. But he's also been made to be the catalyst of Sidney's laugh, been made to fold Sidney into his body and feel the wide, open expanse of the world and feel wonder. Been made to be his own man. 

He is Evgeni Vladimirovich Malkin, and he is home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She is complete at last! This thing has been brewing in my head for years now, and I'm glad it's finally out and I have been thrilled that others have shared my excitement in it. Every "you have a new comment" email filled me with glee and kept me pushing forward. I am going to miss them dearly. And kudos to people that can just pop out 60k in like two months on the regular, because I am in awe and terror of them. 
> 
> The title was a bastardized line from [this](https://poets.org/poem/landscape-blur-conquerors) poem, which I feel like the fic grew into as it went on. 
> 
> Thank you all for coming on the ride with me! I hope you had as good a time as I did.


End file.
